“Serve your families ... serve your neighbors ... serve your cities ... serve the poor. Join others who serve. Serve, serve, serve! That’s the challenge. For in the end it will be the servants who save us all.”
Our Quote of the Week extends a challenge that we should all take to heart: to serve others in whatever way we can. As we continue to contemplate the late President Jimmy Carter’s legacy of service and witness the devastation of communities across the country — fires in Los Angeles, storms and dangerous weather throughout the east, north, south and midwest — may each and every one of us make a personal commitment to serve.
We couldn’t think of a more appropriate message at this moment than these words from Sargent Shriver’s 1986 Speech at the National Conference of Returned Peace Corps Volunteers and Staff. It is a quintessentially Shriveresque expression of the material, emotional, and spiritual importance of service. Although he’s speaking specifically about the challenges the Peace Corps faces in the modern world, Shriver’s opening statement reveals concerns that are universally relevant:
“Mine is an impossible task, to describe the challenge facing the Peace Corps is to describe the most profound problems facing the entire world, and the problems within each one of us which prevent us from fulfilling our potential to overcome those problems. In a mere speech, I am not able to fulfill an assignment of that magnitude. Forgive me, if, then, I say that you know as well as I that hunger, disease, poverty, fear and anxiety afflict more human beings now than ever in recorded history. You know we live face-to-face with total disaster and death through nuclear war. You know that all of us in the Peace Corps constitute merely a handful of persons seeking perfection in a world population of billions struggling for mere survival. [...] Where to begin? Where to stop? I have concluded that no one knows for sure.”
Although it may seem daunting to tackle this “impossible task” of supporting the many who are struggling, one thing is certain: we can always do something to serve others. To illustrate his point, Sargent Shriver quotes another servant leader we’re celebrating this month, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“‘Everybody can be great because everybody can serve.
You don’t have to have a college degree to serve.
You don’t have to make your subject and your verb agree to serve.
You don’t have to know about Plato and Aristotle to serve.
You don’t have to know Einstein’s theory of relativity to serve.
You don’t have to know the second theory of thermodynamics to serve.
You only need a heart full of grace and a soul regenerated by love.’”
Although the challenges around us may be daunting, the message is clear: there is always something we can do to serve, and we are all qualified to do so. What we must do is look around with a clear head and an open heart so that we may understand the needs of those struggling around us, and use our resources to fulfill those needs in whatever way we can.
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