Last Saturday, I went for the second session of our Service Learning Training, to prepare us to be mentors to the motivators in this year’s National Day Parade (NDP). Service Learning is whereby students participate in a service back to the community, and through structured learning and facilitation, they are able to learn lessons through their service to the community.
I had learned many things through the two days of training like, the power of giving the youth a voice and the many different levels of facilitation.
Yet it was the last activity that had impacted me the most, and they succeeded in ending on a high note. To open the last activity, we were asked of the motivation behind service learning, because if the reasons were weak, then we would easily jump ship when the storm of trouble comes.
We were then submitted the notion that the motivation behind Service Learning should First be to truly Care for and desire to Meet the Needs of those we help, then to transfer this learning and compassion to the students we lead through Service Learning. That Service Learning was essentially to serve the people around you.
And to illustrate the point of servanthood, the trainers and leaders then asked if they could wash our feet. We were seated in a U shaped formation and the leaders divided themselves and started to wash each of our feet. Our feet is a very dirty and at times smelly part of our body in which we sometimes only uses our own feet to wash themselves, but this man, my trainer who taught me everything in the last two days, is on two of his knees before me, using his two bare hands to wash my feet. I was humbled.
More than that, as I watch them wash the feet of others around me, God began to show me the greater meaning than the mere action. I began to think if the person washing my feet was not just my trainer, but my Leader, my Boss, my CEO, my Father, my God, through the action of kneeling and washing my feet, was saying “I am here to serve you, forgive me for the times I scolded you, hurt you and wronged you”. I began to weep.
As I was crying I then thought, if this is the action my God would do for me, then are my actions in similar light or are they proud and haughty?
That day I believe that not only were my feet washed, but so too was my heart, and I ask God to continue to engrave upon my heart a greater humility and compassion, and that I would not just be a mere figure or presence floating around without making even a dent in the lives of the people around me.
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