I look to you, heaven-dwelling God,

look up to you for help.

Like servants, alert to their master’s commands,

like a maiden attending her lady,

We’re watching and waiting, holding our breath,

awaiting your word of mercy.

Mercy, GOD, mercy!

We’ve been kicked around long enough,

Kicked in the teeth by complacent rich men,

kicked when we’re down by arrogant brutes.

PSALM 123

In general terms, service is a willing, working, and doing in which a person acts not according to his own purposes or plans but with a view to the purpose of another person and according to the need, disposition, and direction of others.

It is an act whose freedom is limited and determined by the other’s freedom, an act whose glory becomes increasingly greater to the extent that the doer is not concerned about his own glory but about the glory of the other . . . . It is ministerium Verbi divini, which means, literally, “a servant’s attendance on the divine Word.”

The expression “attendance” may call to mind the fact that the New Testament concept of Diakonos originally meant “a waiter.” [We] must wait upon the high majesty of the divine Word, which is God himself as he speaks in his action.

KARL BARTH