Electric Ethos

The word vogue is synonymous with fashion and being fashionable.  I have to admit that I have never been the leader of the pack when it comes to fashion.  I am more likely to be a guest on “What Not to Wear” than to be featured on the cover of any popular fashion magazine. Most of the time I find my sense of style takes a back seat to dollars and cents. If it’s not on the clearance rack I’m not buying. So what’s a guy to do when something he has been taught and tried to live out his entire life becomes vogue? I am not talking about bell bottoms or flat tops making a comeback, I’m talking about service and serving others.

I hope the current trend that seems to have every high profile person on the planet pointing out the plight of the underprivileged never ends. It is always right to help those who are in need when it is in your power to do so. My parents did a great job modeling service and selflessness for me. Fifty years before Angelina Jolie started adopting orphans my parents opened their lives on a continual basis to needy people in their community and around the world.  For my parents there was and still is nothing vogue about meeting people’s needs.

 James 1:27a Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.

Lillian Trasher

This is one of the key verses I hear that is driving the current trend of service, and it gives a clear list of priorities.  Widows and orphans need someone to look after them. This past year I read a biography about Lillian Trasher entitled “The Greatest Wonder in Egypt.” Lillian started the first orphanage in Egypt nearly a hundred years ago now. In her lifetime, she almost single handedly saved the lives of thousand of young girls that the Egyptian culture of the early 1900’s had tossed out because they were female.

Decades later the Egyptians started building their own orphanages only after the world had noticed what Lillian was doing. Lillian served others because service was at the core of who she was.  It was part of her ethos. The Egyptians built their orphanages because it was the vogue and in style thing to do.

Some people are bothered by the masses following the latest trend of service. I see it a different way. If someone is willing to serve others, no matter the reason for their service, let them serve. Lillian Trasher became a model for the Egyptian people and in the process they collectively saved the lives of tens of thousands of beautiful Egyptian babies. Now that is truly vogue.