Time is fun­ny. There are days that fly by, leav­ing us feel­ing hur­ried along like a leaf in the wind, and there are days where we’re left won­der­ing how we are going to fill the hours wait­ing for night. I feel like the for­mer is true for par­ents of old­er chil­dren, and the lat­ter describes the life of moms of tod­dlers and babies.

It struck me a few weeks ago how fick­le we can be about time. What a tri­al it can be to spend “all our time” on a task that feels like a nuscience, even though it must be done. I watched a lady, a leader in the com­mu­ni­ty, an edu­cat­ed woman, set with the charge of refill­ing small bot­tles of school glue to put on tables for kids to use. She set her­self on this task. She saw a need, she took the time. There must have been fifty bot­tles sit­ting there wait­ing to be filled, and there was not a hint of annoy­ance on her face, she was pur­pose­ful, care­ful, dili­gent. It did­n’t mat­ter that there was a room full of teenagers that could have tak­en on that menial task, she was serv­ing in this small way, set­ting an exam­ple of what a good leader looks like.

Who are we serv­ing? I hope that I am a moth­er who shows her chil­dren how to serve even when no one sees, I pray that I am a teacher whose stu­dents learn that a leader is nev­er too qual­i­fied to serve. Our time spent serv­ing is nev­er wasted.

Time is fun­ny, but it is also short. I pray that we all go into this school year with a will­ing­ness to learn along with our children.