Early this year, I read on a broadcast email in my workplace, “Engineering is a profession of service.” I couldn’t agree more. In fact, not only engineering, the heart of every profession is service. Whether you are a businessman, educator, entertainer, sportsman, custodian, or even president: service is the core of your work.

With this regard, we are all responsible for offering a good “customer service.” If I am a president, my customer is citizen. My first and foremost responsibility is to provide the best service to them: healthcare, education, infrastructure, security, and so on. I must be willing to serve, and hence for this reason, I must have a servant’s heart.

There is therefore no actual need to make a comparison between one job and another, because at the end we will be working to serve. A leader who failed to serve is not really a leader. The best example of leading is serving and thus the best quality of a leader can be seen by the way he serves and how he treats others.

This principle is not novel, but it applies to all people in every generation. This secret to a successful leadership has been revealed for over two thousand years. It was the best servant leader in history who proposed this brilliant idea, which remains true and relevant to this day:

“Anyone who wants to be first must be the very last, and the servant of all.”

– Jesus Christ

On this special day for Indonesia, my beloved home country, allow me to encourage you, in whatever situation you now have in your current job, that your work is precious. It is a privilege to be able to work, to serve others, to make their lives better while at the same time also improving on your own. Remember that we all have one Master, He is the Lord of the universe. Let us humbly commit our work to the Lord and do our best for Him with a sincerely grateful heart.

Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for human masters, since you know that you will receive an inheritance from the Lord as a reward. It is the Lord Christ you are serving.

(Colossians 3:23-24, NIV)

Vancouver, August 17, 2019