Did you know we actually plan our posts? Hope I'm not letting a secret out. But, hey, this is Christmas season and Lance and Dante will be too busy or too forgiving for me to get in trouble.
Ahhhhh. Christmas.
Here's what we want share this month to help bring focus on essential dimensions of your life; ours, too! Teaching Selfless Service and Giving To Our Children: Charity, Humility in a Success Driven World, Giving Time Versus Money.
OK. Got it? Then do these things! No, not so easy? Well, maybe there is more to say. Let me offer today's story.
Remember one thing to start. You should finish with this, too. THEY DO WHAT THEY SEE! The kids, I mean. And any new or less developed believers in your sphere of influence. So, are YOU doing "it"? Are you showing selflesness in the "gimmie" season of Christmas. My little RV resort chapel took 35 boxesof Joni Erikson's Christmas cards, wrote thoughtful notes of appreciation, honor, and celebrating God's Gift on each of the 15 in each box. We bundled them in two Priority Mail boxes and sent them to our Adopt-a-Chaplain Marine chaplain in A. Our front lines Marines--and a lot of them are outside the cyber reach of the men and women back at main base.
Cost: Money, zero: Joni donated them. Cost: Time, not much...except every minute in a busy family, shopping, and church season seems like a dog year, 7/1. Reward: Inner smile AND (I'm about to get to the legacy point) the story to share with the grandkids. All we could do arriving at our Christmas season destination was buy one box of Leaning Tree cowboy Christmas cards, ten to a box, and take forever and ever to instruct and help and coach the four writing levels (6-12) among them. THAT was a cost (mostly patience and a bruised ear from the wrestling prone 6-year old who jumped me while instructing the 10yold).
So, you get it, don't you? I do, too, by repeating this. THEY DO WHAT THEY SEE. Are you giving selflessly, the kind they can SEE and doesn't need explaining--or that authenticates your lectures?
Got any ideas to share with us in COMMENTS? Any examples where your children are repeating the model you set by your lifestyle? Do they believe in God deeply and behave in biblical fashion and show life integrity by your lectures, Sunday School, and Bible story books, or because they SEE YOU DO IT?
Talk to us.