Never Walk Alone

Last week my youngest daughter broke her collar bone playing soccer. She typically has a pretty high pain tolerance but it broke my heart to watch her endure such pain while she waited to get an X-Ray. Then, a really cool thing happened. Her teammates started texting her and three of her teammates showed up to be with her while she waited. Even though I knew she was in some serious pain, she was able to smile and laugh because her friends were there for her.

About ten weeks ago I started training to walk a half-marathon to raise money for Habitat for Hope. For the record, unlike my daughter, I am not an athlete. And training to walk a half-marathon has been a challenge for my non-athlete self. However a really cool thing happened during my training. Friends have walked with me several times to keep me going. And, when I walk the half-marathon in Ohio this weekend, several friends are going to walk with me so I don't have to walk alone.

We all need friends to walk with us, especially when we are enduring pain or hardship!! So many of our Habitat for Hope families are in Memphis without the physical support of family and friends. Our volunteers are friends that show up so these families don't have to walk alone.

Elijah's Writing

This past week Elijah had to brainstorm about a topic and pick three words from his list to come up with a telling sentence. He decided to write two sentences. What an overachiever!! Today's my mom's birthday, so here's a little birthday writing from Elijah.

Grandmommy makes popcorn with snacks and plays dominoes with us.

Grandaddy lets us play in the fort and skips rocks with us at the railroad tracks.

Well written Elijah!!
And, Happy Birthday Mom!!!

Live with Purpose!!

The past several months I've been reading through the book of Matthew, a biography of the Life of Jesus. The past couple of days I went through and summarized each chapter. Then chapter by chapter I used different colors to highlight what he was up to and here's what I came up with as a result. A disclaimer--this is not scientific or exhaustive or perfect, it's just my summary and I am by no means a Bible scholar!!!

When Jesus was born, he was headed to the Cross!! The cross was His primary purpose in Life. On His way to the cross He also...

• Talked about the Kingdom of God - 10x
  
• Modeled the Kingdom of God - healing the sick, raising the dead and meeting people where they were and meeting their needs - 17x
  

• Hung out with the disciples and trained them - 18x
  

• Opposed the religious leaders who were trying to trap him and trick him - 7x

My first thought is Jesus invited the disciples to follow Him and he poured out His life into them. They hung out together, not just one day a week for an hour. They lived life together. In our culture it's so easy to relegate our religious activities to a couple of hours a week, but this is NOT what Christ modeled. He modeled relationship NOT religion. As a matter of fact he had some pretty harsh things to say to the religious leaders!!

Parents, we follow this model, often without even realizing it. We hang out with our kids. We live with them. We eat with them. We work with them. We play with them. We vacation with them. In the process of living with them, what are we teaching them about the things of God? So many times we think it's the church's job to train our kids in spiritual matters. Let me pause and say that I value the church's role in spiritually training my kids. My kids have awesome children's leaders and awesome youth leaders. However, they don't live with church leaders, they live with me.

Which leads me to my next thought. Sure, Jesus talked about the kingdom of God, but He spent more time living out the kingdom of God. My actions speak louder than words with people. My actions speak louder than words with my kids.

Final Thought--If a biographer were write a biography of my life, what would he write? Chapter by chapter what would fill the pages? Am I living with purpose or aimlessly going from day to day?