What do you picture when you hear the word servant? Probably not a person sitting at a computer keyboard. The more typical image associated with servanthood would be a person tending to the sick or helping in the food line at a soup kitchen. Or maybe you picture someone on their hands and knees, scrubbing a dirty floor or washing filthy feet. And such people truly are servants.

But did you ever think that you could serve through writing? I didn’t used to think so. After working all day at an inner city outreach, I’d come home hungry to write, yet feeling a tinge of guilt that I wasn’t doing something more worthy of a servant. Though I’d be up late into the night for days on end, wrestling for the right words, I was convinced that those doing the more evidently sacrificial works were the only real servants.

True servanthood is using your gifts, whatever they may be, to bless others. Yes, there are times we’ll be called out of our comfort zones to serve in less-than-ideal settings. Yet if your gift of words will challenge, encourage, or inspire others, it is a pure act of service.

I’m grateful for those nameless ancient scribes who translated scriptures that we might have wisdom for today. I’m grateful for those authors who speak encouragement from beyond the grave because they devoted themselves to pouring out their lives in ink. I’m grateful for those living servants who write words in season for our generation.

To be a servant is to invest your talents for the benefit of others. It’s to sacrifice your time and resources that others may reap from your labors. For those who write, your words may travel to places where even the greatest missionary could never go. And they may touch lives even the most devoted of servants could never reach.

 

Photo Credit: mess of typewriter ribbon | the both and | shorts and longs …