The Inward Joys of a Busboy

“For who is greater, he who sits at the table, or he who serves? Is it not he who sits at the table? Yet I am among you as the One who serves.” — Luke 22:27

The formulation of this essay began as a seed in my heart two years ago. The day I embarked upon setting myself to be the most joyous busboy in northwest Arkansas, I knew I was to create a reflective essay that seeks to inspire readers to give themselves to small tasks with large love.

Inwardly, it started as an ember of gratitude, a setting of my mind and will to bus tables joyfully, that has grown into a deep unquenchable flame of love. As love is always unquenchable, undying, and eternal.

Let’s just say I bused ten tables a day, five days a week, for twenty two months, which is on the more conservative end, because some days it’s well over fifty, even a hundred tables a day, that brings us to over four thousand six hundred tables in that short amount of time. So there is no lack of experience from these reflections you shall soon read. I do however want to lay a foundation of what inspired such a task. A task that included many miles walked over time, hundreds of hours of dishes washed, and a deepening of love with every table cleaned.

A man who has profoundly impacted me, is Walter Russell. I read the story of him as a boy who left school due to an adverse home situation at the age of 9 and began work. He was a bellboy at a hotel, and would later become a builder of hotels. The story goes that he had a vision to “be the only bellboy in existence who never took a tip! And I’ll be the best bellboy the world ever knew. I’ll pledge myself to give the most joyful and cheerful service that ever a bellboy gave!” This setting of his will amounted to five offers of legal adoption into wealthy families and in one season receiving ten times more earnings than if he would have taken tips. He described his season as a bellboy as this, “Love thus regiven to me sent me to an art school and lifted me from the status of errand boy, which could have been drudgery had I not glorified it by deeply loving it as one stepping stone toward my heaven.”

With this in mind, I set myself to enthusiastically serve the world around me with diligent love. Love is not just emotions, emotions are but a side effect of the choice we determine within ourselves to love. Love is giving. What could have been drudgery of cleaning over four thousand tables was neutralized by a desire to love the world. And from loving, inspiring, and from inspiring to impacting. Through my time at the restaurant, thousands of people have come in, imagine for a moment, all of their beautiful lives, and everyone they are connected to, and whom those people are connected to and so on. So yes, a table cleaned of one family of four reaches to the furthest beautiful star in the highest heaven’s, when done with a deep reservoir of love in the soul.

The owners of the restaurant set a principle in motion that I earnestly abide by, that as soon as a guest gets up from a table we should be ready to clean it. There is a dish cart that is parked at the end of our handcrafted bar sitting area. So when our guests are finished with their meal, I spring forth, galloping with gratitude and set into motion a rhythmic dance of love and service. It is to be noted that I have set myself to walk gently but efficiently, I wanted it to be so that no one could even hear my footsteps. I gather the plates into one stack gently and delicately, as if nurturing and tending a flower garden, and carry them to the cart where I dispose of the waste, then spray down the table with a sanitizing agent infused with my gladness. Sometimes even spraying the word love onto the table itself. During this process there is often a lot of motion around, new customers coming in, pizza coming out of the oven, phone calls ringing, it could be a very depleting, nuisance of a task. However, I focus all of my faculties into cleaning one table at a time fully present with each table.

Doing this it has been my observation that my body awareness diminishes and I am caught up soaring into new inner altitudes. Air is thinnest higher in altitude. It is almost like as my oxygen supply to self gets cut off, I am invited into the space of selflessness that has breathtaking nebulous views. One constellation that invited me upward through the small entrance of service is prayer. Aerially, from the constellation of prayer, I get to orchestrate blessings that descend upon the realm of men. I may not know their name or situation, however their face, their body language, the way they ingest life or food, the way they leave their plates and napkins tells me everything I need to know to make intercessions for them that would be fruitful for their lives.

As I clean tables I try to pray a blessing upon them, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to them the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. I pray that the eyes of their understanding be enlightened, and that the light and love of God would nourish their souls just as our pizza nourished their body. That love would abound in their hearts, that the strongholds of fear, doubt, anxiety, and worry would be pulled down with the mighty spiritual weapons that prayer grants access to. I often reflect and think at how tragic it is for so many that have nobody to pray for them. Not a single person in the world lifts them up before our beloved Creator and intercedes on their behalf for them to walk in their God given destiny and purpose. My loving Father and Creator bestows this rich opportunity upon me to intercede and offer up perfuming incense that fills golden bowls of prayer in heaven.

Another reflection on prayer while busing, on a more theoretical side, is my brain produces electricity as I inwardly pray, causing my heart to beat, and from that beat an electromagnetic wave is produced, which emits a unique thermal print that expands ever outwardly conjoining wave with like wave. In science they call this constructive wave interference. Sound waves can’t penetrate space, but electromagnetic waves can. So in one second simultaneously everyone who prays in that moment in a geographic region synchronizes together and in one united wave reaches the exalted physical throne room of God. Interesting to note that in the Bible it says in 1 Samuel 16:7 “…the Lord looks at the heart.” This is a creative perspective of prayer that gets inside the heart, mind, soul, bones, blood, more than just vain repetitions of sounds and words. Prayer that involves the whole being of a man. Prayer that works mighty spiritual revolutions per heart beat.

A quote I love is by Henry Drummond in his book ‘The Greatest Thing in the World’ he says, “After you have been kind, after Love has stolen forth into the world and done its beautiful work, go back into the shade again and say nothing about it. Love hides even from itself.” So inwardly, I keep all these priceless pearls and gems of love, service, prayer, kindness inside my inner man allowing them to oscillate and reverberate throughout my being causing deep rapturous bouts of joy and gratitude that fills me with hidden charity that no man knows about. In the book of Acts, chapter 10 we are told that an Italian soldier named Cornelius offered up such perfuming prayer and acts of charity that an angel told him that it came up as a memorial offering before God. Using my inner visual capacities, I view my acts of service that go unnoticed before men to come up as a memorial before God, pleasing to Him. As I am loving His creation.

Every single human being is a unique one of one design, intelligently and intricately woven together in the depths of the womb. The fingerprints of our hands are entirely unique to us, there will never be another set and never has been another set. As I care and serve these beautifully crafted beings, what I sow in the Spirit far outweighs any physical compensation I may receive. As my internal state will always be more valuable than anything I physically own. The things I can see will surely perish, but that which is unseen, but very real, is eternal. As I sow love, love is regiven to me in a greater capacity. Largeness of heart is what I covet, the ability to feel more deeply, the ability to see the world with purer eyes and to have a heart that beats to the rhythm of passion that causes calloused hearts to melt under the glorious weight of love.

Jesus said “Whoever seeks to save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life will preserve it.” (Luke 17:33) In as much as I lose myself in loving service to Jesus and my fellow man, in that measure will I find my life. I actually find myself, in the losing of self. My true authentic self is hidden in Jesus and service to others. To see everybody as the gift they are and the beauty they have on the inside is revealed through the door of service. The path upward is found lower. The river of God whose streams make glad runs to the lowest places. An upside down Kingdom where if you want to go higher, you must go lower.

Service to others regardless of reciprocity from them, will bring joy unspeakable into your heart and life. Service and giving of yourself to the world around you is one dynamic of the Kingdom of Heaven coming to earth. Service is prayer in motion. Service is joy. Service is genuine lasting greatness, he who is last is first, and he who is first shall be last. Service is lasting wealth and imperishable riches. Service is deep unending joy that unlocks the secret whispers of the Holy Spirit. Service alleviates the darkness that plagues the depressed soul. What is depression except being trapped in the prison of self by thoughts that have compounded overtime. Don’t we realize that our thoughts are one of the strongest forces of the universe, thoughts are things. Our thoughts change the neurochemistry of the brain and work groves in the mind. We must take the reign of our thoughts and steer them out of the ruts of self, to more noble aspirations. Furthermore, service starts to hammer out the unlovely qualities that we hold in our character. The way we serve speaks louder than anything our words can say. Service will always be a cleansing fire the disciple of Christ must walk through, as no servant is greater than his master.

When we start to look like Jesus, the One who serves, the eyes of the Almighty creator are drawn to your life and blessing begins to overflow you. It is more blessed to give service than it is to receive. There is no happiness in getting or receiving only in the giving. Jesus who revealed the Father Creator perfectly, emptied Himself and took on the form of a servant and didn’t use equality with God as something to be used to his advantage. He made Himself of no reputation. Jesus invites us, “take My yoke upon you”, His yoke of selflessness is light, which means the yoke of self is heavy and burdensome.

Before Christ, I lived incarcerated to the throes and woes of vain self seeking, what can I get, what can I consume, how can I have more pleasure, what can I devour, living abased floating from desire to desire like a destructive animal. I was imprisoned in self, a brutal and most nefarious jailer. What poverty it produced in my innerman. I became unrecognizable physically, mentally, and spiritually after my torturous time with self. Those were dark days, no sunlight, days. What turmoil to live in this way. Selfishness, the most destructive of sins, the birth of wars, famines, poverty, disease, hatred, bitterness, all ugliness can be traced back to the venomous poison of selfishness.

Sadly so many others are caught up in the headspace of I, ME, and SELF and can never come to the meek shores of serene gladness through joyful service to others. The waves of the oceans of service are so calming and refreshing and all throughout the day as I focus on offering the most joyous service possible, the waves and billows of love crash and course through me.

I know I spoke rather intensely about something that we were born with innate from the first man Adam, called self. However if you are reading this essay you are well on your way to the higher life, the upward narrow road. I wrote about the intensity and severity of being a selfish person and the assured destruction it will always bring. I wrote that service is the key to every pleasantry life has to offer. These meditations and thoughts have been stirring and I pray that you begin your journey in service to God and man. Jesus said not one bird falls to the ground without the Great Fathers knowing, also that one cup of cold water given in His name will never be forgotten. This to say that every act of service will never go unnoticed before all of heaven, though sometimes unrewarded before men. Service is viewed as lowly and menial, but I am convinced that it is lofty, noble, and will bring your inner man to heavenly heights. It creates a largeness of heart and mind. Light permeates and refines us as sometimes we will get offended while in service, remember that the most unloveliest of people need loving service the most, and that it is your honor and privilege to bring them love and care. Your reward comes from above and vertically, not horizontally.

Dear precious reader, start today on the path of service by picking up a simple piece of trash, helping someone put away their shopping cart, opening the door for somebody, letting a driver pass you, and in your workings viewing everything as service to God, will lift you to a very high exalted state. He who humbles himself under God’s mighty hand in due time will be exalted. Remember to not grow weary in doing good cause in time you shall reap a harvest of rich reward if you don’t give up. From simply busing tables and washing dishes diligently with love in my heart, God has breathed on my life and elevated me to the position of Operator. Starting October 2, 2023 I will be operating a brand new franchise called ‘Simple Simons Pizza’ in Elkins, Arkansas where the mission is to ‘Glorify God by promoting family values and helping others succeed’.