What Does It Look Like? - Selfless Devotion

What Does It Look Like? - Selfless Devotion

NOT LONG AGO my sleep-deprived daughter, sporting spit-up on her blouse, looked me straight in the eye and said, “No one told me it was going to be this hard.” I just looked at her and blinked. The “no one” she was referring to was me. Uh-oh.

After she left, I basked in self-pride. I must have made motherhood look so easy. But then I became confused. Wait . . . how could she not know this is sometimes very hard? Had she not seen selfless devotion for these past thirty years?

Well, of course she had; but like most of us, she didn’t know what she was looking at.

Our recognition of selfless devotion is like our relationship with the sun: it comes up every morning without our doing a single thing. We take it for granted, enjoying its light and relishing its warmth. But even though it’s a constant in our lives, we rarely really “see” it. Only the occasional spectacular sunrise or sunset gets our attention. And we certainly don’t appreciate what’s going on in the background. Few of us understand the way our solar system hangs together. No, we give little thought to what it takes for Mr. Sunshine to smile on us every day. It’s the same with selfless devotion.

My friend BJ didn’t know what it looked like either; not because she took it for granted, but because she had never laid eyes on it. Ever.

When she was a baby, BJ’s biological mom gave her away to a woman who worked in a bar, who—when BJ was only fifteen—left BJ alone to raise herself. And somehow, by the grace of God, she did it.

Fast-forward to BJ at the age of forty-six. Prior to a major surgery, BJ began looking for someone to hire to take care of her as she recuperated at home. But a precious friend, who had invited BJ into her family, volunteered her mom, Genny, for the job, insisting that this was the solution to BJ’s convalescence needs. Little did BJ know that this would be a close encounter of the selfless kind.

But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things! (Galatians 5:22-23)

Do you remember the day you realized that you were looking selfless devotion in the eye?