价 Servant

Day 65.


As I saw this happening, I could not help but think: this would never happen in the US.


I was with 3 friends in a restaurant.  We were just hanging out, eating dinner, and there was a baby sitting at the table behind us.  I started waving at it and making funny faces, and her mom turned around to see what the baby was looking at.  She saw our table full of foreigners (we are few and far between in Taiwan), she brought her baby over, handed it to Junell and walked away.  This is not a joke.  She went to pay and then went back and sat down at her table.  We must have had her baby for 15 minutes.  It was awesome, don't get me wrong, but just so shocking.  


This week in class we're learning about missions.  I LOVE IT.  Today we learned about it by studying Titus.  The very first verse begins like this: "Paul, a servant of God".  Greek has many words for "servant", but this particular one is doulos. We went back to Exodus 21:5-6 to learn what a doulos servant is, "But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life."


This piercing of the willing servant's ear is significant on three levels.  The first is the fact that it's in his ear.  The Hebrew word for listen does not have the same meaning as it does in English.  It means to listen and obey.  So the significance of it being in his ear almost like a definition for what it means to be a slave: when he hears, he obeys.  The second is that the way this is carried out, a huge chunk of the man's ear will be bolted into the doorframe of the house forever.  There's no way of taking it out.  This man is a part of this house forever, and he chose it.  Third is that, whenever the servant goes out into public, the moment others see him, they will notice that he is marked, that his life is not his own.


This is supposed to be a picture of how we get saved.  As soon as we enter the kingdom of God, we should willingly say, "Drill me through, God." and our lives should be so marked that as soon as people see us they know our lives are not our own.  So often Christians try to fit in with the rest of the world, but that's not what we're called to be doing.  We should be doulos servants for God.