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      When I was a little girl, my family would travel to my Grandmother and Grandfather’s home and eat the noon-day meal with them on Sunday.  This meal, or should I say feast, was a big deal and everything about it needed to be properly prepared to my Grandmother’s standards. This included setting the table with the correct “service” which she would remove from the sideboard and instruct me and my sisters on how to properly place each piece of “service” on the table.  We just did not refer to the silverware as anything but “service”.  Each piece had a specific purpose and each was necessary to complete the table setting, to Grandmother’s standards.

     I looked at our lesson for today, Service, and wondered how I was to make a connection with the above story.  Let’s say that the table that is being set is “God’s church” and each piece of “service” represents individuals and what gifts they bring to His church.  No two pieces are the same and each piece serves an individual purpose.  All are necessary, but all are different. We are given instruction and proper placement of our “service” through God’s Word.  If we come to the table without “service” it would be extremely difficult to partake of the feast before us.  The same is true of God’s church, in that, if we come to His church without “service”  we can not truly call ourselves “servants of Christ”.  Maxie Dunnam writes:  “To be a Christian person, one fully alive in Christ, is to be one whose life reflects the life of Jesus.”   Paul writes -  “ we are God’s handiwork, created in Christ Jesus for the life of good deeds which God designed for us.”  (Ephesians 2:10)  “and it is he who has given some to be apostles, some prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers, to equip God’s people for work in his service, for the building up of the body of Christ…” (Ephesians 4: 11-12) – Karen