rebelbase Woodley

This picture doesn’t look very profound.  Cute?  Yes, but profound not really.  However it did get me thinking and you are going to have to follow me on this one.

Last year my grandfather died and the last time I saw him he was in a nursing home unable to recognize his family or communicate with us.  We brought him some brownies and I ended up feeding them to him.  It was a strange experience to feed someone that had always taken care of me.  There were a lot of things swimming around in my head that day:

1. Sadness over the lose of my grandfather’s stories
2. Fear for the day we would be without him
3. Realization of the short time we have in life
4. Questions of who would be feeding me someday when I was unable to eat my own brownies

The last thought has come back to me lately as my son continues to grow and pick up some strange habits. In the past week he has decided that it isn’t fair that Mommy and Daddy always spoon food into his mouth so he has started returning the favor. Whatever he is eating he puts in his own mouth and then pulls it out and with his arm extended toward us, grunts in a way that signifies it is our turn to taste his food. We want to promote his sharing attitude so of course we eat what we are offered and make the obligatory ‘mmmmm’ sound.

This is a cute mealtime game but it hit me that someday I might be relying on my son to feed me every meal. A friend once told me that there are things in life that we can’t sacrifice on the alter of ministry. One of them was our children. That means we can not neglect our families in the name of doing good things for Jesus. I am starting to realize just how wise these words are. Saving the world is great but we can’t neglect our greatest duty to love our family with the same Love that Jesus has demonstrated to us.