Need Something To Do: Serve!
Are your days dragging on? Are you looking for a way to contribute to your local community? Do you want to get involved in a project bigger than yourself? Do you need some hours to fulfill a community service requirement? If so, I have got the thing for you: serve. It sounds elusive and ambiguous, but it does not have to.
To serve others is a wonderful thing. There are a few compelling reasons to spend your time in this valuable way. First, taking time to serve gets you outside of your own life, your own cares, and your own needs and forces you to focus on the needs and cares of others. Most of the people in the world and even in your hometown have different issues, problems, and concerns than you do. And this is a great thing. By taking the time to serve people different than yourself, your life cannot remain focused only on you for very long. You will find that you begin to think of others' needs along with your own.
Taking the time to serve others can also be fun. Are you interested in sewing? Why not start a sewing group at a local nursing home. Spend a couple of hours each week teaching or reteaching elderly women a skill that will help them connect with one another and pass lonely days with fun. Or perhaps you love kids. Take a few hours each week to serve as a recess monitor at a local elementary school. The teachers will love the break and you will love getting to know the young children. Maybe you are great at fixing cars. Consider taking that rare skill and using it to serve single mothers or elderly people who are not able to fix their own vehicles. What a blessing you can be and what a fun time you can have when you serve others.
Serving is great because it is so easy. You do not have to commit forty hours each week to serve in many organizations. Instead, set aside just a couple of hours each week to serve in an area that you love. You can even start to serve by doing something as easy as raking your neighbor's lawn or by offering to pick up your neighbor's groceries when you pick up your own. What could be easier than that? Or serve your friends by offering to cook them a meal or pick up their children from school. Are you passionate about women having healthy pregnancies? Volunteer to serve one morning a week at a local pregnancy care center.
A final reason to serve is because it is important to the health and life of all communities. Every community would benefit greatly if all of its people were generous with their time and energies. Think of all the great things that could happen in your town. Amazing things can happen when people put their passions and their skills together. Needs are met and problems are solved when people begin to serve one another.
Take some time right now to consider an area or two that you can serve in. Think of ways to include the cares of others in your day. Make sure that you choose to serve in an area that is fun for you. You will be much more likely to do something well if you are having fun at it. Serving others can easily be incorporated into even the busiest of schedules, and your community will thank you for it.
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Julee Mitchelsin loves to encourage people to serve their communities by writing timely pieces on the subject. Check out www.serveplace.info for more details.