She said, “I am a practicing Christian.” The woman meant someone who actively lives out their faith in every aspect of life—through obedience, service, transformation by the Spirit, and love for others.*

So said my audiologist last week. What, then, does it mean to serve?

For her, it means more than being in the business of helping others, for which she is paid a non-commission salary. When we discussed the cost of new hearing aids, I joked,” I don’t suppose there is a secondary market for the six-year-old ones I have now, is there?”

This uncommonly talented woman with two young children the age of my grandchildren smiled. “No, but I work with the homeless in my free time in Hyde Park. Their hearing gets tested, and we provide and tune donated hearing aids — at no cost to them.”

This is one definition of service. Her free time is created—not an idle space in an empty schedule. An average day helping the homeless requires a 50-minute drive from her home—nearly two hours back and forth to try to repair the world. Her clients’ lives are better for it.

There are several classes of service, of which she fits into the first.

• Volunteer to provide uncompensated assistance to those less fortunate. Those who tutor students for free in schools belong to this group. Doctors Without Borders is another example: Doctors Without Borders/Medecins San Frontieres (MSF) cares for people affected by conflict, disease outbreaks, natural and human-made disasters, and exclusion from health care in more than 70 countries. 
• Doing work or advising someone else, for which you are paid or provided something in trade.
• Armed service members who choose to defend their country.
• Elected public officials take an oath to serve the people they represent.
• Servers at a restaurant.
• Bruno Walter mentioned another somewhat different service form, attempting to “serve the cause of Mozart.” The conductor felt that when he was young, he misunderstood the “depth of emotion which speaks in Mozart’s seeming tranquility and measure.” Walter’s sense of responsibility to the composer led him to wait until he felt mature enough to perform the profound Symphony #40. He was then age 50.

It is easy to take some of those who serve for granted. The bussers in a restaurant come to mind. The job requires efficiency and, to a significant extent, invisibility. Yet they serve us, have names, ideas, and emotions, and deserve an appreciation they do not always get.

We recognize those in the armed services, though it seems too little at the beginning of a sporting event. Their stories and the sacrifices they and their families endure remain unknown. From that point of view, a part of them is also invisible.

My conversation with the audiologist made me think about life’s meaning, a topic most of us have considered.

Might part of it be to acknowledge our fellow man’s existence regardless of race, nationality, or gender? Might part of it be to give him solace, hold his hand, and respond to his needs in moments of distress?

To do so does not require religious belief, although my audiologist is among the finest examples of how a grounding in faith sometimes engenders the best in people.

In part, the world is ours to make.

We have a choice. Who are we, and who do we wish to be?

I chose my audiologist because I recognized her expertise.

The next time I see her, I will also be in awe.

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*The bold description of practicing Christianity was sourced from Google and appears to have been created by AI. The italics description of the work of Doctors Without Borders comes from their website.

The top photo depicts Humanitarian Aid by U.S. Army Sergeant Kornelia Rachwal in response to the 2005 Kashmir earthquake. She gives a young Pakistani girl a drink of water as they are airlifted from Muzaffarabad to Islamabad, Pakistan, aboard a U.S. Army CH-47 Chinook helicopter on 19 October 2005. The photo was taken by Technical Sergeant Mike Buytas of the United States Air Force and sourced from Wikimedia Commons.