By Abdu Rafiu

And the foregoing brings back to memory the essence of reflecting on the Cycle of Beneficial and Joyful Service, and the assurance that no service is lost in the annals of life. No help, no service is rendered in vain. Go to the ant and learn, so we are admonished. When we reflect, we say to ourselves: Come to think of it, is it from the ants’ sense of duty, their demonstrable organisational skill and abilities, their attitude and application to work? See their columns. If we reflect just a little, we find there is a lot to learn from that tiny creature, the ant, to which man pays scant attention, if at all.

What about the Nature Beings that provide the air which we breathe unceasingly for 24 hours that make a day, for 365 days or 52 weeks that make a year, 2,160 earth years that constitute an Age—thus the Age of the Father, the Age of the Son and the Age of the Holy Spirit!! We are wont to then say the Lord Christ departed this earth more than 2,000 years ago, and that we have entered the Age of the Holy Spirit.The beings are in dedicated, loyal and untiring service in the 26,000 years that make the Platonic Year also called the Great Year.

Working with plants, the beings turn carbon-dioxide, through photosynthesis using sunlight, into oxygen without which there can be no human or animal existence. We are oblivious of their work, and we take the availability of air for granted. The modern man is closed to them after paralysing the faculty, the hind brain that provides the link for their recognition, being the spiritual receptive part of our brains. Only the uncorrupted children see and relate with them.

Consequently, because we are hardly conscious of their existence and work, we do not relate with them, how much give thanks for their invaluable service. Air is taken as given until our breathing is hampered and we are unable to breathe in clean air or exhale used-up air and doctors say we may have inhaled polluted unfiltered air. They arrange to pump air into the afflicted. The beings give their all in the service of the Most High without first reconsidering and without fore-thought.

For us human beings, what is service? Because service by man is a forlorn hope, hardly genuine even where a semblance of it is rendered, borne largely out of calculation, craving for fame, self-aggrandisement as well as for public acknowledgement.A great many seen from Above, may have alienated themselves from the cycle of beneficial service which is loaded with rewards and blessings.

Everything in which we are engaged is by definition service. However, to come to a proper understanding of the meaning of service, we must first understand its constituent parts: The doer/giver; the recipient and the deed, that is, the one performing the duty or work, the work or duty performed, and the beneficiary. The doer is the active agent, the beneficiary the passive agent and the deed the nexus which links the active with the passive. If service is properly conceived and properly executed as well as properly received, it involves motion which is not linear but cyclical. It leads to a situation the active agent soon becomes the passive agent and the active agent even if all he sends out is an expression of gratitude.

A good service is generated in the recipient’s gratitude, and the cycle of actions engendered by the service closes, having lifted the two agents concerned to a new plane of being which can indeed serve as a starting point of a new cycle of service. In other words, it can be seen that when we render service, we are cooperating in the cyclical service of life and the entire Creation which is unceasingly mediated.

Grasping the rendering of service that moves in cycles takes us to another level. Service requires knowledge of a higher kind. Are we not told that in these times, we would be availed knowledge that will lead mankind to further Truths? I hasten to state that a person rendering service may wish to note that he is taking from the rich storehouse of Creation and passing it on in order to relieve the beleaguered neighbour. We use the Radiations streaming down from the Throne of Grace for all activities, for thoughts, speeches and action. It is this knowledge that should make one realise his smallness and become humble. It should indeed make the person realise that he must not demand gratitude as of right since at best he is only an agent passing on to another what belongs to the Source of All and Being.

Finding himself in this blessed position of being used as an agent, he in turn owes a debt of gratitude to the Creator Who owns that which made the service possible and Who chose him as an agent of fulfilment.

In other words, all praise and gratitude go to the Most High, the Author of all life as He is Life and Power—Life that requires nothing to make Him Live. He is Life from and in all eternity!