Service is an extremely familiar word in our vocabularies, as it has some kind of importance for each one of us. I am not going to simply define the word service, rather I am going to talk about service from my perspective and experience of the last twelve years spent ministry among elderly Aamas (mothers).
What does service mean to me?
Service is integrated and holistic from my understanding of our witness of our faith in Jesus and the call to ministry. Service is expressed through love that demands nothing but gives everything to whom we are called, to the vision and mission of the Almighty God. It never thinks whether we have or not, but keeps on giving and giving only. We cannot separate service and love like they are two sides of one coin. There is a service in the world that knows no love and thinks primarily of one’s own selfish desires. I am thinking of theservice that is practiced in love to help the helpless, the most vulnerable of the world’s poor.
I am blessed to serve in this capacity to elderly Aamas, women who have no one in this world. They fend for themselves without a husband, property, money, friends, children or other relatives to help take care of them. Service is something that you give for the joy, happiness and self-realization that we are all also important. In the last thirty years of my Christian life and experience, the people most neglected by the church are elderly Aamas. Churches have programs for youth, children and adults, but there are no programs or outreach for the elderly. I asked one pastor of a very big church here in Nepal, “Do you have any programs for the elderly Aamas?” He simply answered me “No,” as elderly people are often not viewed with importance in the church. He told me that older adults are not recognized as contributors, either to church or to society, and that they do little more than sitting around and praying.
It is very easy to comment on service, but it is a very different and much harder thing to actually do something. We asked one Aama at our recent conference that we planned about her wellbeing. She replied with tearful eyes that “I have nobody to take care of me in this world except God, and God uses you and me in different forms to give peace, joy, and happiness so that they can feel dignified.”
Earlier I said that service demands giving and giving only, and that you can give service in different forms. That may be money or dedicating your total life to ministry, or perhaps periodically finding those who are neglected in our world and spending time with them, taking them to some places of beauty so that they can rejoice and feel dignified, feeding them some nice food of their interest. This is what we do.
I have been serving Aamas by committing my total life for them, to living life with them. Some of my friends come to me and say, “Jyoti, what you have done by wasting your fruitful life with these elderly Aamas?” This kind of comment really upsets me because I know what I am doing, but I answer gently that at least by, in my friend’s word, “wasting” my life, I am able to bring peace, joy, happiness and dignity to these most vulnerable of the world’s poor, elderly Aamas, women who have lived eighty years of life and should be dignified. It is not enough to do only for yourself, to never contribute to anyone in a less fortunate position. I rejoice in this, that by “wasting” my life I am serving not only these women, but I am serving God. I am committed to that and I am ready to give my all, whatever the cost, whatever the challenges I face, I fear not. I do not want a name for myself in all of this, only to let the mighty name of Jesus our Lord, who called me and all of us for this kind of service, be glorified.