humanity or hushpuppies

On Thursday I took a little road trip with one of the Senior girls in our student ministry. She had an overnight college preview event at Ouachita Baptist University near Hot Springs, AK. We drove the 7 hours up and I dropped her off and checked-in to my hotel. I was going to have the next 15 hours or so to hang out in the Ozark area. I found this little family owned seafood place around 8:00 p.m. and went in to eat. This middle-aged couple came in about the time I did and sat down. With your meal you got hushpuppies and all these other fixings. I listened as a waitress told the couple they were making more hushpuppies and they would be out really soon (they were close to closing time so I think they were cleaning up). About 10 minutes later the waitress brought the couple their food and the woman, without looking up and with a slight scowl on her face said, "Are the hushpuppies going to be ready anytime soon?" I could hear the agitation in her voice and I knew this could potentially get ugly. I watched a little more closely because events like this make me sad to be a part of the human race. I noticed the lady seemed to have permanent down-turned lines around her mouth as if she had a permanent frown on even when her mouth was closed-as if she had spent so much of her life angry the lines were etched into her face. And I wondered what it must look like on the inside if her anger was so evident on the outside. About 10 minutes later the young waitress brought out a huge basket of hushpuppies to their table, sat them down and apologized for the delay. The woman, without looking up from her plate and in a tone communicating her extreme dissatisfaction, snapped, "We are done with our food now. We're not going to eat those." She continued to scowl and the waitress apologized again. Moments later they got up and left, leaving the hushpuppies untouched.
I found myself embarrased and saddened. I hate rudeness. It is so unnecessarily. Is anything worth treating someone as if they are not human? Are hushpuppies really worth treating your waitress as if she is the lowest of all life? When we do this it is as if we are saying to someone, "You exist for nothing more than to serve me and serve me to perfection and if you don't fulfill that obligation I will treat you like the dirt under my shoe." It is one of the must ugly things. It is that kind of hate (in the very beginning stages) that leads to great atrocities. The thing that scares me the most about moments like these, is that I see this in myself. I would never treat a waitress like that, but I am not immune to using people and thinking that they exist for me. I see ugliness in me and I beg Jesus to dig it out. People (every person) exists for Him, not me-to bring Him glory not meet my needs. This is why our interior life is so important. What is on the inside cannot help but come out. If we do not have love in our heart for our neighbor it will be evident and Jesus says that if you don't love your neighbor you don't love Him. My prayer is that God would give me the heart of a servant-that the Body of Christ would be the opposite of this lady in the restaurant and that we would make ourselves a slave to our neighbor for the sake of Christ, rather than see others as objects at our service.