I'm a Facebook user so I have read all the reactions...the cries for gun control, or conversely, the cries for armed guards, adminstrators and teachers at our schools. I've read thoughts on how we can fight this evil and opinions on who's to blame. Above it all the most often phrase I read again and again is a simple one: "Hug your child tonight." That is good and wonderful advice , but honestly, dear parents, we are going to have to do more than "hug our children" if we want to see change in this world.
My friend, Melinda, a young mom of four boys, hugs her boys often, but it is the life lessons she is determined to teach daily that will impact her boys futures more than anything else. She is guiding her young sons to be outwardly focused each day by doing something good for someone else...most of the time in secret. The day of the horrible Connecticut school massacre, she and her boys went to hand-out Christmas stockings at a senior living home, but they were not allowed in. Instead of being critical and giving up and going home, they found two elderly gentlemen waiting at a bus stop and gave them the stockings instead.
Melinda and her boys have left diapers and wipes at diaper changing stations, paid for the order of coffee behind them at the drive-thru at Starbucks, baked muffins for their local librarians, brought a tiny decorated Christmas tree to an elderly neighbor, and many other thoughtful acts of love and kindness. And there is the answer to the question, my friends. What can we do to make a difference...to make a change? Show love and kindness, and even more importantly, teach it to our children though instruction and example.
Loving your children is not enough. It is in the doing that change happens. Hug your children, absolutely, but also teach them to be sensitive, kind, and considerate, to have compassion and empathy. Show them how to love, not only in emotion, but in action as well. Show them you CAN love someone you don't know...that you may never know. Teach them to give without expecting anything in return. Help them to have eyes to see the need all around them. You can do something. You can raise a child to be the one who sees need and cannot turn away. You can raise a child who will not tolerate cruelty to anyone for any reason. You can raise a child who reaches out with the love and kindness of Jesus and quite possibly change destinies. Parents, we are NOT powerless! We hold within the walls of our homes a force for good that is immeasurable.
Hug your children and then take them out and find something good to do and then KEEP doing it over and over every time you see an opportunity. Be proactive and LOOK for opportunity...pray for opportunity, ask that your eyes might be opened...guaranteed, that is one prayer that our Lord will be overjoyed to answer. When our adversary whispers to you..."What can you possibly do?" Remind him that you will not allow him to overcome you with evil...that instead you will "master" his evil with good. (Romans 12:21 amplified version)
We are praying for you, dear families, that our Lord will shower you with an abundance of good to be done.
Cherri, Peter, Chris and Kathy
