Generation follows generation...

As I watched my daughter set up the table and the other kids who are part of the youth mission team at our church stand up and make a plea to the church to donate shoes for the souls for orphans project, I realized the importance of passing on what God has called us to do to the next generation not just in words but in actions.  She has not just heard but experienced the plight of orphaned children, Four of her siblings formerly lived in orphanages and 2 in a foster home.  She not only heard of children needing shoes, but watched her new sister and brother come home with flip flops held together with paperclips and watched me put ointment on the sores on their feet for months until they healed.  She saw the pictures of the excitement of the children in Bulgaria as they received the shoe boxes so many pack with treats for Christmas and heard her sister tell of how happy they were to receive them a week before and how hopeful she would be Christmas morning only to find year after year no presents on Christmas Day.  She has watched her father faithfully head out every Saturday morning and spend countless hours building Trusted World and she herself has gone out and handed food out to the men and women in need.  To her God's commands to serve the orphans, the reality of pure religion is not just words on a page, its not just a catalog that comes out at the holidays that shows pictures of hurting kids.  Its the people she loves and its the people she has watched transform through the little we had to share.  Its amazing to me because so many times I worried that the sacrifices we made in her life whether time, money or emotions in following God's calling in our lives would impact her.  It did, but in a way that gives me great joy.  She is standing in a church lobby today making sure as many children as she can possibly can will have a new pair of shoes.  She is touching the souls of children she will never meet, but she knows that they are valuable.  The Bible tells us to pass it on from generation to generation and so it fills me with such joy to see my children rise up to the occasion and stand in the gap for those who can not.  God has taught me through these 16 years of parenting, kids will learn love and will learn compassion if that is all they know...I will be the first to admit I go into life having no clue what I am doing, everyone who truly knows me knows this...  I have had a ton of ups and downs and many times I have questioned if I am really following God or really messing up what I have going :)  But as I watch my oldest daughter share her love for others and as I listen to our uniquely created family talk about their futures and realize they believe caring for others is just, what you do and have the realization that love is color blind, I begin to see a peek of what God has done despite me.  He has made this.......