serving another's dream

I don’t go to a proper restaurant very often and to one of those top of the range restaurants with a chef of renown – never! I watch with bemusement programmes like Masterchef and cannot believe that anyone can talk so pompously and pontificate so seriously about food. People are starving out there!! In a posh restaurant you pay pounds and pounds for a swirl of this and a drizzle of that. When you have finished your meal you are desperate to get home and cook up some chips just to take the edge off your hunger!

Service is what a restaurant is all about for me, friendly, polite and smiley service, unlike a dive I was taken to in Warsaw a few years back. I was accompanying a friend who had roots in Poland and had got in touch with a small church in one of the suburbs. We had said to them that we were there to serve them and not in it for ourselves. They were used to the ‘man with his ministry’ coming through and demanding to be served. They took us at our word and decided to put our resolve to the test.

The café style restaurant was basic to say the least. Blue plastic letters pressed into white board spelled out the menu, about which we did not have one clue. I think we had beetroot soup (of sorts) and then offal, but from which animal remained uncertain. It was pretty disgusting but we said nothing. We had beds in a back room of a church next to the broom cupboard. It was a tough week, but we walked their area and prayed around the property that they wanted for a church plant, which they got in the end. Subsequently they referred to us as angels (we weren’t) and on our second visit we were given accommodation with the pastor – much more comfortable!

It was a big lesson in serving. We are called to serve the King and His Kingdom. We look for the master’s ‘Well done’. One of the lessons Joseph had to learn was to serve another’s dream with just the same dedication as he would when his own dreams came to fruition.

Joseph served Potiphar. In Genesis ch39 v2-4 it says, The LORD was with Joseph and he prospered, and he lived in the house of his Egyptian master. When his master saw that the LORD was with him and that the LORD gave him success in everything he did, Joseph found favour in his eyes and became his attendant. Potiphar put him in charge of his household, and he entrusted to his care everything he owned.

When that all went belly up, he continued to serve in the prison where he was incarcerated. In v20-22 it says that while Joseph was there in the prison, the LORD was with him; he showed him kindness and granted him favour in the eyes of the prison warden. So the warden put Joseph in charge of all those held in the prison, and he was made responsible for all that was done there.

No whingeing or moaning, no complaining about being called to greater things – just serving God where he found himself. No wonder God could trust him with saving the nations! As for Masterchef – I’d love to see those guys do the business and serve it all up with a smile – wouldn’t you!!