“And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it for one of the least of these brothers or sisters of Mine, you did it for Me.’” Matthew 25:40
Who are the people it is easy for you to love? There are ways you serve those you love without a second thought. Since you have a close relationship, it is easier to love and serve them more than it is a stranger. Likewise, it may be easy to serve when we have planned it on our schedule, but we have a hard time when helping others disrupts our day and routine.
Yet when Jesus spoke about service, He was not just talking about serving those who we are close to us or serving where it is convenient. He speaks specifically about who we need to orient a life of service toward—the least of these. Think for a moment about who the least of these are in your community. Are they people who you regularly bump into and interact with? Jesus’s direction in this passage calls us to open our eyes to see the people we have written off or intentionally avoided because it feels uncomfortable.
When Jesus calls us to serve the least of these, it is a direct call out of what feels safe and natural to live dependent on Him in faith, seeking to serve and love well those who are different from us. This is what Jesus did for us. He stepped out of heaven to come to us in our greatest need and our greatest mess. He spent His life serving the people others had written off at times that were inconvenient, then He laid his very life down to give us access to God. Jesus has shown us what it means to serve the least of these, and as we follow Him and are transformed by His Spirit, we can also live in that way.
- Who are the people you are regularly serving? Who are the people who would be hard to serve?
- Who are the least of these around you? What are your interactions with them like?
- Pray and ask God to show you how to serve and love the least of these in your community.
