To Serve or To Be Served This Summer?

June 21, 2009

When summer rolls around most parents look for activities to keep their children busy, and that can be a good thing, but what kind of busy is it? Are the plans you have for them to entertain them? Maybe they are activities that are just good, clean fun? There are so many clubs, camps, pools and movies available just to keep the kids busy and out of mischief.

I’d like to challenge parents to re-evaluate what activities you are choosing to keep your kids busy this summer. Before I get hate mail about being against ‘fun’, or not letting children be children, that is NOT AT ALL what this post is about! There needs to be a balance, a balance in work, service, education and play. Gradually, as children grow older the play part of their day should become less. It is not a good thing for teens to be hanging out idle or playing sports for majority of the day all summer long. They need to be working and/or serving others. Investing in something more than themselves! 

Are  you choosing activities that are nurturing a servant’s heart in your children? Or are the activities they spend so much time doing ‘all about them’? Are you teaching them that it is all about them getting more? About them being more? 

Parents need to seek out opportunities to let their children serve others, expecting nothing in return.

I have noticed that when attitudes are the worse in our house is when someone is focusing too much on themselves. They are too worried about what others are thinking about them, feeling self pity because they are missing out on doing something their friends are doing, or if they are feeling that life is just unfair! Do you see the focus here? SELF! And we all suffer from it at one time or another, even us parents!

I also see in kids where their parents run themselves ragged to keep their child/children involved in every activity that the child wants to do, and sometimes it is the parents that want the child to do so much. These kids often grow up thinking that it is all about them. When they marry they think that their spouse is to cater to their every need, their every whim.

Whether it be in childhood, teens, marriage relationships, family relationships, or in job situations, most people will not give of themselves for others, unless it benefits them directly.They will grab their "me time", when they think they need it. They will advance their career at the cost of their marriage and family. They will buy things that will help them achieve the pleasure they desire or at the very least the image they want to portray. They will choose to not have children because it interferes with what they want. Aren’t most failed marriages because there was so little giving; so little dying to one’s self and living for the other?

Parents, seek out ways that your children, or your family as a whole, can serve others.  You HAVE to be deliberate about this, because this is so against our nature! 

Different Seasons of Life and  Serving as a Family

You may have many little ones so your opportunities to reach outside your family may be very limited right now, but teach those young ones to serve each other! Start training them to look for ways to help someone in their family without expecting something in return. Make it a challenge to serve in secret.

There may be sickness in your family and reaching outside your home may be next to impossible. This season may be a time of serving others in prayer, or perhaps you can give finacially to help someone who is doing the actual work of service.

You may have a season of financial limitations. This does not limit you from serving others. Usually what people need the most is something done for them, which usually cost little or nothing! Or you could partner up with someone who can give financially, but not physically.

Some Practical Ways to Serve
Some of these things can be done once a year or on a regular basis.

~Be sure the needs at home are taken care of first (most important).

~Find ways to help grandparents and the elderly in your extended families (second most important).

~Can/preserve excess fruits and vegetables for the elderly or poor.

~Cook a meal for the elderly, the sick or even for families that have young children.

~Offer to help clean or care for the children of moms that are feeling overwhelmed.

~Older teens could help at crisis pregnancy centers.

~Do a food drive for local shelters.

~Bake bread for the homeless or children’s home once a month. Quick breads last longer.

~Offer tutoring or music lessons for foster children.

~Crochet, knit or quilt items for children’s homes, nursing homes, hospitals, bereaved parents. 

~Send cards or letters to the local nursing home and ask that they be given to someone who receives little mail. This could be done once a week or once a month.

~Does your community need some cleaning up?

~Check the needs of the missionaries that your church supports. Sometimes they need more than money. One year we cut up and rolled sheets to make bandages for hospitals in Africa.

~Check the physical needs of orphanages, local and foreign.

~Nursing homes usually need people to come in and read or play music for their people. I use to donate a birthday cake once a month.

~Make fresh cut flower arrangements to be given to people in the hospital that have not received any flowers.

I’m sure there are tons of other ways to serve others, without expecting anything in return. Pray, ask God for direction and be alert to circumstances around you.

Help your children make good choices to serve others, so that when they become adults, they will know how to put others first.

What are your children focusing on this summer? Fun in the sun, or loving others through the Son?

Topics: Meeting the Needs of Others | 9 Comments »