We are half way through the year. Are you remembering your word of the year? Or did you choose a word this year? It’s not too late!

My friend and I are sharing a book called One Word One Year Faith Journey. She had passed it to me the other day and I got a chance to renew my committment, as my interest had been waning. The book gives guidance on choosing a word, along with journaling questions and ways to interact with the word.

The Service Charge

My word this year is Serve. I thought of this word over the holidays and rejected it. It was too much like last year’s word. It was too pushy and uncomfortable. After Act last year, I wanted a word that was cozy and aesthetic. Something I could look at and admire. But Serve wouldn’t leave.

Serve the Lord with gladness, come before his presence with singing.

–Psalm 100:2

It’s taking some effort and I’m trying to pay attention. Even half way through the year, I haven’t told many people my word. They might say they haven’t even noticed. Or maybe they will take notice and not see a lot of serving. Or maybe they will ask me more often to serve and then what will I do?

In January I made a banner with muslin, black sharpie, a stick from the yard and the above verse as my theme. Here’s a closer look at serve:

serve: to be a servant, to be of use, assist, hold an office, adequate, wait at table, put the ball into play, be enough for, useful labor without tangible results.

synonyms: help, accomodate, reverence, respect, please, fill the bill, satisfy

service: ritual, celebration, maintain, repair, overhaul, readjust

serviceable: practical, sturdy, everyday, economical, effective, functional

etymology: serve comes from servus, the Latin word for slave. It meant to ‘render habitual obedience to’, and ‘minister, give aid.’ It also has some connections to the word shepherd. Earliest evidence of use around 1175 and is of mulitple origins.

I love doing this initail exploration of a word. All of serve is in the present tense. Serving grounds me here and now. This is the time and place where I can serve. I can’t serve by looking back or forward or wishing to be in some other capacity. These people I meet, these tasks in front of me are my only options in serving.

The Service Manifesto
I believe service feeds us.
I believe service is a witness.
I believe service is practical.
I believe service opens doors.
I believe service serves me, too.

Whatever our words, it matters how we think about it and the stories we tell ourselves about it. Mental preparation and gratitude are important for serving.

First come, first served

This is how Serve is serving me.

I see a need to let myself out of the box of introversion, privacy, fears, my spectator tendency and observer bent and to let myself be what’s needed in the moment. That’s scary! Spontaneity is not natural.

Like the poem by Shel Silverstein: I asked the zebra, are you white with black stripes? or black with white stripes? I don’t have to put myself into the box of introvert, melancholy, INFJ or enneagram whatever. Actually I can choose to behave in the way the circumstance requires. At least for a time. If I see myself as “black with white stripes” it will take more effort to live in the white stripe but it still is a little part of who I am.

I noticed Serve in others. Every service counts. We need all the work to make the world go round. Somebody once said: If you are a street sweeper, sweep streets like Beethoven composed music or Michaelangelo painted.* Booker T. Washington said ‘there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in composing a poem’. Whatever you are, be a good one. Not to prove you are good, or because you are trying to reach the next rung of the social ladder, but because all work is needed; all work has dignity; all work praises our Creator, if it is done for Him.

Without any angst, we invited a girl to stay with us for a short time. I tried (again) to set reminders for birthdays and committed to writing letters to a select family members. I’m reading a new verse about service every day for a month. I occasionally have company. I attend various church services. These things seem feeble in the typing out, but they feel like little nudges in the moment and I want to follow that nudge.

I assembled a hodge podge of furniture out on the porch and it is serving us well on cool evenings and the occasional Sunday breakfasts. I made some servicable dresses for the summer. I keep on serving food every day to hungry people. I often eat more than a serving. I even have served the volleyball. I have thought about serving. I have to start somewhere.

The Song Service

These phrases of songs are on repeat in my mental playlist:

Would you be poured out like wine upon the altar today, would you be broken like bread to feed the hungry? Father hear the prayer we offer, nor for ease that prayer shall be, but for strength that we may ever, live our lives courageously. It’s the one who won’t be taken who cannot seem to give and the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live. To God be the glory great things he hath done, so loved he the world that he gave us his son.

In July, our guidebook says to focus on your one word and how it relates to freedom. Now my song is Hey little worm! Don’t you see? Only butterflies are free. Come out of your shell and fly with me, only butterflies are free. And makes me ponder again the boxes I put myself into, and why.

Last week I was able to put into words why Serve has made me feel unsure. Service is a word that involves me and other people. If service is actually service, it means the other person is satisfied. It means I filled the bill. Waitresses get tips, volleyball players get points, people who hold office get recognition (sometimes). Yet to be adequate, satisfactory, enough, useful, or to please, depends both on my performance and other people’s perception of it. Serve in the present tense might relieve tension. The tension it creates in the present stretches my comfort zone. Serving takes faith and trust and sometimes letting go of schedules. (Schedules serve us for good, too.) I need to follow the Spirit.

Only fear the Lord, and serve Him in truth with all your heart; for consider what great things He has done for you. 1 Samuel 12:24 NKJ

Ready to Serve

I’m thankful others have served by writing because it’s a source of inspiration that often inspires me to practice serving. Here are books I have read or that I hope to read yet.

The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro (fiction) Loved this, and the lesson I learned from it was that it matters who you serve. Missed chances do not come again, and there’s always time to do better.

The Service Berry by Barbara Kingsolver (nonfiction) Waiting my turn for this one on Libby reading app.

Improving your Serve by Charles Swindoll (devotional) On order from Thriftbooks. I read my mother’s copy years ago and want to reread.

Each Little Bird That Sings by Deborah Wiles (middle grade fiction) A story about a girl that lives with her mortician parents. Her mother says, We love to serve, we serve to love.

Upstairs at the White House by J. B. West (nonfiction) I have no idea how this will relate to serving. The funny thing is, when you focus on one word for months, it starts relating to everything!

Soft Serve

Serving requires a soft heart. Tho I give my body to be burned and have not charity it profits nothing. Charity is the ingredient that keeps my heart soft. Charity makes me notice others’ needs. Charity makes me care. Without it, serving is only a task to check off the list.

My goal when I started writing was to be serious, to write a thoughtful devotional that would tell you how I’ve been serving. Somehow all these dogs barged in on my serious thoughts. Before today, I have never thought of Serve in relation to dogs. Compared to them, my little services amount to a pile of sticks. are Dogs are always willing to put the ball into play. They are game for anything. They offer companionship, comfort and humor.

One words are surprising! They continue to make connections as long as we pay attention.

On the further adventures!

You are still here? You deserve a star!🌟 Please tell me your word for the year in the comments.

–Liz

*Some sources attribute this to Martin Luther and others to Martin Luther King, Jr.

More Word-of-the-Year ideas:

Harness the Power of a Single Word

Six Ways to Use My Word of the Year