I have spend a bit of time thinking about charity and service. I think of what it is to truly serve someone with no selfish motive what so ever. Mother Teresa said "The world today is hungry not only for bread but hungry for love". This reminded me of a story that my mother told me, that she had heard from someone else. I can't recall the name of the woman in the story but for now we will refer to her as "Debbie". Debbie ran a humanitarian mission in India for many years and she was inspired to do so by the amazing work done in that area by Mother Teresa. In the beginning, Debbie's mission dealt mostly with lepers. They had a few doctors who came and volunteered to help and basically remove all the infected areas on the lepers body. This is an extremely time consuming task and so they had most of their volunteers cleaning out the wounds and prepping them for surgery. The first time I heard this story, Debbie seemed as much of a saint to me as Mother Teresa. I didn't think I could imagine a more Christ like way to serve somebody...but I was so mistaken.
After Debbie had been running this mission for a few years she decided it was time for her to meet the woman who inspired her to do all of this, Mother Teresa. She had heard she was going to be in the town for something on one specific day and so Debbie set out to meet her. There was a hoard of people around her and she left before Debbie got to see her. She asked a woman there if she knew where Mother Teresa was going. The woman said their was an orphanage close by where Mother Teresa spent much of her time and there would be a good chance of catching her there. The woman headed off to the orphanage and when she walked in she saw tons of extremely sick children laying all over the floor. All the workers were standing around and Mother Teresa was in the middle. As Mother Teresa walked through the masses of sick children she would occasionally stop and point to one and one of the orphanage workers would go over and pick up that child and sit and a rocking chair and rock them. All the sudden, before Debbie could even process what was happening, she herself was sitting in a rocking chair rocking a sick child and watching Mother Teresa leave out the door before she ever got the chance to meet her. She leaned over to the woman next to her rocking a child as well and asked, "If you don't mind my asking, why are we rocking these children." The woman responded, "Mother Teresa will come in as often as she can and walk though all the children. She will find the ones who she can tell are about to pass away. She points to those children and we go pick them up and rock them until they die because Mother Teresa feels that every child deserves to leave this world feeling loved."
Although Debbie never got to meet Mother Teresa she gained more from this experience then she ever would have by shaking her hand and saying hello. This story has truly been the best example to me of pure charity and service.
