january 15: serve others...

I'm not sure if you are born with a heart to serve, or if it is taught.  My guess is that it's a mixture of the two.  Keeping an eye and ear out for opportunities to serve is something I am working to better myself at.  I know some people who just know what people need.  After finding out you've had a bad day, they show up at your door with a rotisserie chicken and a bunch of flowers...somehow it's just what you needed.  Others who can organize a collection of fast food gift cards for a mom who just lost her husband.  As a family, I hope that we can be in tuned with our community enough to see needs that arise and, without missing a step, swoop in to address them.  If it is a learned characteristic, there's no time like now to start teaching.

We went back and forth with what our service should be.  We thought about raking a neighbors leaves, washing someones car, and even crashing a friend's house to clean up.  In the end we chose to go down to the lakefront and pick up litter.  It was a beautiful thing, and the boys really got into it! Abram watched from my hip as the bigger ones climbed up and around rocks gathering cups, fast food bags, and beer cans.  We explained how if the trash gets into the lake, the fish can get sick.  We also talked about how it makes the park a prettier place for our neighbors to visit.

Our final loot filled up 5 Wal-mart bags...not bad for 30 minutes of work!  Little experiences like this will hopefully add up to boys who look beyond themselves to the greater needs of our world.

Picking up trash helps our whole community...tomorrow we teach them to serve on a smaller scale...