Serving Lips With Love

And they made their lives bitter with hard bondage—in mortar, in brick, and in all manner of service in the field. All their service in which they made them serve was with rigor.  Exodus 1:14

Service at hard labor we might think, from prior experience or just plain ignorance, that we have a handle on. What ought to frighten us, but may not have, in our reading through the Exodus story is that bit about all manner of service in the field. That sounds like one of those biblical  understatements we run into in the scriptures. Wait, all manner of service? What do they mean by all manner? Probably all that our imagination can come up with and worse. And even with that, the more difficult service to give may have been those lips. Yes, those annoying, irritating, fast-running lips speaking words the owner thought were funny, even hilarious, when they thought them up the night before. While we may not have service in hard labor in our lives today, we probably still have those lips to contend with. And, to serve the owner of those lips in love can be tough. It being so much easier and more satisfying to tell the offender just how unfunny he or she is to you in that moment. 

Some scripture that may help us in this is to memorize what Paul writes about love in 1 Corinthians 13. Quickly we find that love is not those things we want to do in response to the annoyance. Who can help us to respond in what love is? The One who loved us at the cross and rose again to be with us forever. May our Lord Jesus lead us to give the loving response to those lips demanding service in the most unfunny, unkind, and even unbelieving ways we will run into in this life. 

And have faith, He is coming soon!

Bucky