As a homeschool dad I am always looking for teachable moments with my children. The Lord gave us one today. I was speaking with a member of the church today about an auction that was held last Saturday. He had bought a load of bricks and another family in the church had bought a load of lumber at the auction.
The lumber was stacked in front of the bricks so the man who bought the bricks could not take them home until the lumber was moved. Yesterday, I helped load and move the lumber. To my surprise, the friend from church who bought the lumber ended up giving it all to me to use at the ranch. What a blessing that was!
When I called the church member who bought the bricks to let him know the lumber was out of his way, he told me it would have to wait a few days because he was recovering from “the two worst blows to the head he’s ever taken in his life.” This gentlemen is around eighty and has experienced a lot in his life, from breaking horses to working in the mines, so for him to say he was hurting that badly I knew it must be really bad.
It turns out that the second of the two accidents he had this weekend involved slipping and falling down some stairs, hitting his tailbone on one step and the back of his head on another as he slid down the stairs.
He told me that once he was feeling better he and his wife would go over to the auction site and load the bricks into his truck. That got me thinking. It didn’t seem right that this older gentlemen and his lovely wife should have to load a truck load of bricks by themselves.
In our bible school lesson on Sunday we learned how God cares for His people through the kind acts of others. I thought this would be a perfect object lesson for the family to reinforce what we learned on Sunday. I talked with my family about showing God’s love to this couple by going over and getting the bricks and delivering them so they wouldn’t have to do it.
Thankfully, the whole family agreed that this was a great opportunity for us to serve someone else. So this afternoon, my wife Chris, my eighteen year old daughter Heather, my six year old son Thomas, and my three year old son Robert, and I went over and spent a couple hours loading up two bundles of bricks into my truck and delivering them to our dear friends. It was great having the family working together passing bricks from the pile, from person to person, and up into the truck. Even Robert helped out, carrying a brick at a time.
When we arrived at the couple’s home, they were pleasantly surprised and very grateful for the kind gesture. It only took two hours out of our day to be a blessing to someone else and to teach our children a lesson about service to others. When we finished unloading the bricks we found it interesting that we had delivered exactly 777 bricks.
I encourage you as Christian parents to look for teachable moments that you can use to reinforce the biblical principles you are teaching your children. Nothing drives the point home like some hands on experience.
Serving Christ and His family,
Pastor Ken Lawrence
Posted by pastorkensblog 
