It All Depemds On Whom We Are Serving

Serving – November 2014 – Grace & Truth Magazine

It All Depends On Whom We Are Serving

“And Mephibosheth, the son of Jonathan, the son of Saul, came to David, and fell on his face and did obeisance. And David said, Mephibosheth. And he said, Behold thy servant!” —2 Samuel 9:6 JND

People don’t naturally choose to be servants. In fact much of human history is the struggle of enslaved peoples to be free. In our own country, from the Revolutionary War down to the present, people have been attempting to break out of that which they consider bondage: political, economic, marital – the list could go on and on.

But the Bible describes the lives of some who chose to be servants. What prompted such a choice? Why do a few swim against the tide of common human aspiration and lay hold upon servanthood? A crippled man named Mephibosheth may provide some answers to this question.

This man had an illustrious heritage. His grandfather, Saul, was the first king of Israel. His father, Jonathan, had been a mighty warrior until he was killed in battle. But Mephibosheth was a cripple, a nobody, a self-confessed “dead dog.” In a sense he was free, but free from what and free for what? Like many others who consider themselves free, he seemed to be simply existing rather than really living.

And then King David entered his life. Unconcerned with all the hatred and injustice that Saul had directed toward David in the past, this king wanted to show kindness to any of Saul’s descendants, for Jonathan’s sake. Hearing of Mephibosheth, David brought him to Jerusalem, spoke kindly to him, restored to him his ancestral lands, gave him a place at his table and treated him as one of his own sons.

No wonder Mephibosheth took a place as one of David’s servants! You see it all depends upon whom we are serving. It is no wonder that those of us who have turned from idols to serve the living and true God consider ourselves supremely blessed.

By Grant Steidl