Serving God

As I mention in a previous post, my wife and I serve at our Church. I was there yesterday setting up all of the supplies for Sunday School. As I was wrapping stuff up a friend of mine, Aurora, that works at the Church came in and we got to chatting about her "life group" (a smaller group of folks that do life together, worship, bible study, etc.) and how they were volunteering at a men's shelter in Seattle. I was aware of this because she sent out an email asking for donations (I donated to the cause :) - those men could definitely use the cloths more than me). As we talked, she asked me if my wife and I could serve in a different area of the Church as well, to help her out. This was not the first time we had talked about this. We spoke about it some time ago and she asked me to talk to Tammy (my wife) and pray about it. I told Aurora that I had prayed about it and that God was leading me to focus on getting my grandmother moved to Seattle (in a previous post, I explained we are moving my grandmother up here to live with us)and that with 4 children our plates were pretty full. I went on to say that as things settle down in the future, perhaps God will lead us to make a change and serve in a different capacity. She totally understood and simply smiled and said "I'll be waiting". It struck me in the conversation that I was standing in the middle of a very large Church with some 1500 members and the staff always seems to be struggling for people to step up and help. It made me think of all those people that may be missing out on an opportunity to serve God. My wife and I do not serve in the Church to "help the Church", we serve because God has commanded us to serve - helping the Church out is simply a nice perk. I can only hope and pray that those people that are not serving at the Church they call home are either serving in some other capacity somewhere in the world or will soon understand that it's not about making time to help out once in a while...... it's about understanding that God has commanded us to do so and we must to do it.