Service, Not Servitude

Give, and it shall be given unto you. – Jesus the Christ

It is when you give of yourself that you truly live. – Kahlil Gibran

“Stop walking, start serving!” As this thought forcefully pressed into my consciousness, I was pulled within to converse with the Spirit. Why was this statement presented into the field of my awareness? As I placed myself in a listening mode, I began to understand what many people have the concept that they go to “work.” Think of the new vocabulary that would emerge if the world embraced an attitude of service and generosity of the heart, rather than work! When you perform that which has been given to you to do with an attitude of work, you are actually in servitude to that work. You are a servant to your own burdensome false idea, Service, on the other hand, is freedom.

Ralph Waldo Emerson said that we place the Universe in our debt as give more that what we are compensated for, if we don’t work for mere money alone. Since we cannot outgive the Self-givingness of the Spirit, the Universe will create opportunities to give even more back to us than we could ever give it.

You are here to serve the great Law of Life. You are, in fact, in service to the Supreme Creative Idea that proliferates our environment. It is the Life if God that is thinking through your mind, working through your hands, walking through your feet. It does the work appointed for you to do and perfects that which concerns you when you no longer “work” for the little self, but “serve” the greater Self of your being and the Universe.

Today, recognize and practice – no matter what your job description is – that you are in service to an Eternal Idea. No task is too great or too small when done in loving service. Then you will joyfully act with detachment, surrendering the fruits of you labors to the Infinite. Open yourself to what the Hindus call seva, which means service, and you will find yourself filled with a Divine vitality and vigor that comes directly from the inexhaustible Font of Inspiration, which is the Eternal Idea Itself.

I know myself to be a Divine Center of loving and creative service. I give generously to life and am vitalized, energized and magnetized by the living Spirit.

Michael Beckwith