FULL-SERVICE OR SELF-SERVE?

When I was growing up, all gas stations were service stations. When you drove in, one, and sometimes two people came out to fill your tank, wash your windows, check the oil and battery and whatever else they thought needed to be checked. If there was something wrong, they worked on your car right there. And if you wanted something to eat or drink while they were working on your car, there were candy and pop machines available, but no more than that.

Not so today. Today, we can buy all the food we want, even stuff for the laundry, but we have to fill our own tanks, wash our own windows, check our own oil. If my observations are valid, most people are like me: we fill our tank and our stomach and forget about everything else. We're too much in a hurry any more. Back then it was full service for your car. Today, what is offered is full service for your stomach and barely lip service for your car.

Today my body may be taken care of but my car gets neglected, except for the gas. Today it is all self-serve. I would prefer the full service. That way I do not neglect what I often do now. When left to my own desires and devices, what most needs to be taken care of often, my car, gets neglected and what needs to be neglected, my stomach, often gets full treatment. At least that is what is being offered. It is truly a crazy world we live in these days, isn't it?

Gas stations - service stations are almost a metaphor on all of life, perhaps especially our lives as Christians, as people of faith. Today, instead of taking care of all that needs to be done, we tend to the most immediate need. Instead of allowing other people to help us do what has to be done for us, we try t do it all by ourselves. We want to be self-service Christians.

That was never the way it was, nor is it the way it should be. God did not create us to be alone. God created us one for another, to help one another -- and not just when the other is in desperate need to be helped. In the old days I hardly ever needed oil and my windows did not always need to be washed. But the oil was always checked and the windows were always washed, needed or not.

In the age of self-serve only immediate needs seem to be the concern. We do not allow others into our lives except when there is an emergency. We'll take care of ourselves, thank you. But we don't do a very good job. We neglect to check what needs to be checked. Then when the oil runs out and the engine develops problems, we wonder how we got into so much of a mess and worry how we'll get ourselves out of the mess, all of which is our own doing; all of which could have been avoided had we not been so self-serving.

When we gather to worship, we are reminded that we are here one for another at all times and not just in emergencies. Our faith is a full-service faith: gathered together we remind ourselves that we are here to serve one another and not ourselves alone.