Read, Reflect, Repeat

If you are like me you can read a passage of scripture, reflect on it for awhile hoping that the Holy Spirit will empower understanding, and then at another time read again and find another meaning we may not have seen the first time around.  Thus, my daily reading through the book of Mark uncovered this today:

Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, (10:43)

I have no problem comprehending that verse, but there is a comma followed by this:
and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. (10:44)

Wait a minute, I can be a servant and that makes me humble enough, but a slave to all? A slave has a master, and that means you are my master, or does that mean He is my master and I should be the same kind of slave He was to us all? Either way it is extremely humbling and destroys much of today's modern Christianity philosophy.

We tend to make people want to come around to our standards of belief, our way of thinking, as if they should "come up" to where we are. Instead, we should meet them where they are at without judgement and with a spirit of Jesus foot washing attitude. Like eating with sinners and tax collectors, and in so doing we teach them how our master really is, accepting. loving and merciful.

We can all say the words, think we are walking the talk, but these verses humble us to a point of becoming like missionaries in our own neighborhoods looking to act like we are last so that we can put our neighbors first. In plain words it is not how much we have that we can show to others how much the Lord has blessed us with. 
Instead, it is how much of ourselves we can give away to say to others you need to see less of me, and more of Him in me.

Then I serve, then I am His slave, then I become great, only then do I finish first.  Read, Reflect, Repeat!