Giving

A couple weeks ago, my mom let me know about a co-worker of hers that had injured her foot and would be unable to work for the next several weeks. This was very distressing to her, as her coworker is a single mom with two young kids, and there is no support from the father. I sent an email out to the guys in my life group, and they responded with almost $100 to help provide for them. In a prior weekend, our students had a talk on giving, and they donated $160.00. They were given 3 options to put the money towards, and the nearly unanimous choice was this mother and her two kids.

Today some of the adult volunteers took some of the students to Target to shop for the family they adopted. The kids had so much fun picking out gifts for people that they had not met, it was an amazing thing to see. They're bickering back and forth over the merits of a robot vs. a fire truck, or whether a Transformer puzzle is better than a board game. I was soundly corrected by one of the students for suggesting maybe picking out something educational. My bad... ;)

Joy. There was Joy there. Relational giving - giving a gift that means more than the latest gizmo. These kids not only gave their money, they gave the gift of love and hope to a single mom who was facing having to tell her kids that Santa might not show up this year. We hope to deliver the presents, along with a a Kroger gift card this Saturday. This should be an amazing display of God's love for all of us.