A Giving Heart

As a parent, it's hard to know exactly how to teach my children how to develop certain characteristics my husband and I would like to see in them...... honesty, courage, compassion, dedication, (to name just a few.) When I came across an article in the Focus on the Family publication "Clubhouse Jr." for kids, I had a feeling that this mission project was something I needed to do to help my kids develop a giving heart.

Over the span of a month, my children collected shoes for an organization named "Shoes 2 Share", which sends new and used shoes to Haiti and other countries. They helped me write a letter to our church, make a box to collect the shoes in, empty the box every week, match the shoes and rubber-band them, count them, and then put them in the box to ship. We prayed almost every night that someone special would receive a pair of shoes just for them. It was so exciting to see the kids run to the shoe box each week and look in to see how many shoes we had collected. With help of our church, friends, and the local library, they collected over 300 pairs of shoes to send to this ministry!

My hope is that God instills in their hearts a giving spirit, compassion for the poor, and a sense that they can do something to help, even as a child. I pray that they feel that God used them to do something for his kingdom, and that He can use each and every one of us, no matter our age, race, or economic status. How can God use you today? How have you taught your children to have giving hearts? I would love to hear your ideas!

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue, but with actions and in truth. ( 1 John 3:17-18)