Candles and the Cost of Service

"A candle loses nothing by lighting another."

I can say from first- and second-hand experience that this is only half-true. While it's true that some service costs us nothing, or, at most, very little, other forms of service cost a person a great deal. And even if the service one gives isn't monumental in its scope or cost, the cost of many acts of simple service can add up alarmingly fast. This form of work takes a toll of a person as much as any other form of work does. Whether you devote yourself to a few great works or countless smaller ones, there is almost always a cost.

On the other hand, theoretically, there are rewards as well as costs for the service we do. Also theoretically, the rewards are always equal to, or greater than, the costs. If this is true, then that means that our repayment for our service will always be at least as great as its cost.

Unfortunately, the rewards and the costs don't always line up. If you spend time and energy doing work, and you get paid in cash, getting paid for your work doesn't mean that you get your time and energy back. You might be able to buy something that saves you time or energy later, but I think I'm letting the analogy take me too far away from the original topic. If the service we give is physical or emotional, and the reward we get is spiritual, we may have great rewards awaiting us, but we'll still feel tired and drained at the end of the day.

A candle may lose nothing from sharing its fire, and maybe I'm pulling the wrong analogy from this message, but we do lose things when we reach out to others. We lose time, we lose energy, and sometimes we even lose peace or sleep. The rewards may more than make up for the costs of our service, but that doesn't negate the fact that there is almost always a cost.

We shouldn't underestimate the cost of service, and we especially shouldn't undervalue our sacrifice when we pay that cost. We may, eventually, get as much out of our service as we ever put into it, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't a price to be paid first. To say that service has no cost is to undercut the sacrifice of those who chose to pay it.