As a parent, I sometimes see our day to day lives as little more than a string of teachable moments, held together with moments when we can attempt to live out those lessons. At times, I try to seek out as many teachable moments in our days as I possibly can. Sometimes though, it is the moments that you don't even see coming that are the best.
Our church is very involved in community outreach programs. One such program is a produce outreach, where low income and needy folks in our community can get fresh perishable food goods on a monthly basis, in the parking lot of our church. This happened to be the day that those goods were distributed.
Today is also the day that my daughter's Daisy troop meets at the church. I happened to have both kiddos with me when we arrived to a very full church parking lot. My children surveyed the scene and marveled at the sheer number of cars. Seeing a small girl with her parents, my daughter asked if this was another new Daisy, come to join our ranks. I explained quickly that no, these were people coming for the fresh food outreach.
My son, playing the older and wiser sibling role immediately attempted to translate for her and explained "Yeah, those people are collecting food for the needy..."
I gently corrected, "No honey, actually those people *are* the needy."
To which he looked up at me with wonder and surprise in his soft brown eyes and said simply, "But mom, they look just like us."
There is no better lesson that I could have hoped to teach my children today than that: there is nothing that separates us from those that are less fortunate but luck and circumstance. There is no "us" and "them". No superiority. No distance.
I only hope that message can stick with them as long as it will stick with me.
No comments:
Post a Comment