Simple Service

Simple Service happens when the connection between the giving and the receiving is:
Direct
Immediate
Indisputable

Simple Service is the type of serving where imperfect human behavior doesn't mar the value of the gift given nor the joy of the gift received.

Simple service is, almost always, much preferred over the other more convoluted, long-term, and high-risk means by which we seek or are called to give light to an often dark world.

Simple service can mean serving a meal to someone whose hunger once sated, allows a moment of contentment to spread from one end of being to the other.

Simple service can also be teaching an elementary school child whose wide eyes and open mind will absorb and delight in new knowledge just for its own sake.

Simple service can be, too, a gentle touch given to a family pet who receives the gift with eyes of warmth and tails of joy.

It is, after all, like Chicken Soup:

With a bowl of chicken soup before me, I can close my eyes and name all the ingredients of this hot comfort food, right down to the spices.  My nose is not confused when it catches wind of the simple meal.  It doesn't have to sort through all kinds of trans-fats, saturated fats, unsaturated fats, or unlisted ones.   Instead, my nose instantly recognizes the healhfulness of what it smells, and along with my taste buds, its sets all signals on GO as the first, and then second, and many more spoonfuls slide smoothly and warmly down my esophagus into my eagerly awaiting stomach.

There, in my GI tract, the minions that I imagine doing all the hard work of separating the good things from the bad, the edible from the waste, are like the tireless workers at a fictional recycling facility.   Hour after hour, day after day, they will work to separate what is useful from what is not.   Though they don't complain all that much when for every ounce that is useful, another does not belong and must be thrown downstream in the GI tract to be discarded as waste... they relish the days when the Simple Meal arrives.   On these days, most of what the GI minions receive is healthful and is sent directly and faithfully to the fuel hungry cells throughout my body.  What little remains, the useless waste, is sent forward, neither overwhelming or damaging the machinery that follows.   Furthermore, the process is done quickly, with little inefficiency, so that the body's energy can be released for other functions, including service to the God that designed all this wonderful biological machinery in the first place.

Simple Service is like that .... it's a process that proceeds unhindered.  It is nourishment, whether physical, emotional, or spiritual, that flows from giver to receiver without anything in the way to muddle, diminish, or color the gift given.

But, simple service is also an act that once transformed by the open spirit of the giver, becomes the drive toward more muddled, more troubled service whose outcome is not so often visible, rarely straightforward, but just as worthwhile as the simpler ways of serving both people and planet.