Good • Strong • Safe

published on August 26th, 9:27 a.m.

It’s funny how often we think of giving, tithing, contributing to mean doing something in a financial way. But being a contributing member of society doesn’t mean just giving away money!

  When we teach our kids to share not just money or things, but their talents, their time and effort, we’re teaching them to use their whole selves to help others.

  Far too often it’s easier to give money to a charity then to help a neighbor rake leaves in his yard or work the bake sale at school or write notes to the shut ins and elderly. But that’s exactly what we should be teaching our children. God gave each of us talents to share and we’re specifically told to share those talents, not bury them in the ground.

  I know of a young lady who has taken voice lessons for years, it cost her family money and time to get her those lessons. But she loved singing and they love to hear her too. So throughout the year she sings for lots of organizations and dinners. But she also goes to nursing homes, church socials and sings just to entertain and bring happiness to people at no cost to them, just because she loves doing it!

  She is sharing a talent she received to make others happy. While not all of us can sing or even be brave enough to get up in front of strangers and sing or whatever, we ALL are given some kind of talent we can share.

  I’ve always encouraged my kids to write thank you notes for weekends spent at Grandma and Grandpa’s, birthday days gifts, or just to say hi, I’m thinking about you today. These notes are a way of getting my kids to see that even a small gesture, not costing anything but time, can bring happiness to someone.

 Giving is it’s own reward. We have to be careful of using the phrase, “if you give, you’ll receive”, because to a child, they may think they’ll get back exactly what they gave and giving doesn’t work that way. Giving means it’s coming from you freely, without expectation. Just because you make contributions to your favorite charity, does not mean you have better chances of winning the lottery.   If we give away money or even our time while thinking to ourselves this is going to come back to me, or God will reward me for helping out someone, we have the wrong notion about giving.  Ouch, that hurts. I know because I catch myself doing that all the time! We seem to have a built in bartering nature in us!

  God tells us we should also give to those who cannot give anything back to us.  So we teach our kids to volunteer to help teachers after school, help the neighbor plow their driveway and not take “material thank you’s” for it, to pray for others, write notes to people who seem lonely.

  Of course, if we, as parents model these behaviors, all the better to teach the lesson! Quite honestly, we still need to remember it’s these things we show up in Heaven with—not what’s in our checkbook or retirement fund or able to deduct at tax time.  It’s how much we gave of our own talents, our time, our patience, forgiveness, help and love.  This is what we’re all called to do.

  So your kids will be learning about giving this month at class—as that fits with martial arts. It’s about being of service to others, as Jesus did. He came not to be served but to serve— It goes right along with keeping ourselves safe and those around us safe too. As we learn to protect each other, we learn service to one another, caring and wanting to help our neighbor!

Lisa Simmons