Jury Duty

I enjoy a good courtroom drama. There were a few times staying home sick, watching the daytime TV, and Matlock reruns would come on. Then a little later it was JAG. This started me reading books by John Grisham. Grisham became my favorite author for a few years, and I read several of his books, and them backtracked to some of the movies. Movies like The Rainmaker, The Firm, The Pelican Brief became part of my “sick movie” collection. The things you can watch while

Tyler Renninger

you are sick and have seen so many times that if you accidentally doze off, it doesn’t matter. The latest courtroom drama show I’ve gotten interested in is Bull.

As much as I enjoy legal dramas, I’m really hopeful it is much more boring in real life. I’ve been called for jury duty the week of August 8th.

This disruption to daily life that a jury duty causes has made most people I talk to cringe, and I’m not too thrilled about it either. The one thing that all these shows try to show is how important the courtroom is. It is part of our social responsibilities, and one of the ways we serve our community.

Even though I hope it is more boring than what is on TV, I also hope that it doesn't feel like a waste of time. When we go in to serve, we want to feel useful. We want to feel useful if we are serving for a jury or serving our community. We have to take some moments of serving on a little bit of faith: we don’t get to see the benefits of our service or our service is just another piece of the larger picture. I don’t know if my jury service will be of benefit. I don’t know if there are any long-term benefits to some of the volunteer work I’ve done before. I do know that the act of service is the important part. The rest of what happens after service is up to God. Even if it’s the service we don’t necessarily feel like doing.
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In His Name, Tyler