Wow...2 posts in the same week. My writer's block must be going away! :-)
Something happened recently that has stuck with me and I just had to share. A couple of weeks ago, we began a 12 week class for adults at our church on Wednesday nights. Because we wanted as many adults to participate as possible, we decided to offer child care for kids from Birth through 4th grade. Our intention was to hire college students who did not go to our church to handle the child care. However, we were not able to secure the number of college students needed and knew we would need some more people to help handle the number of kids. I got the crazy, I mean brilliant, idea to ask some of our Middle School kids to help out since their youth group meets on a different night. We also decided that we would offer them 5 dollars as bribe, I mean incentive, to serving and doing what they are supposed to as opposed to being another kid for the college volunteers to manage. (They are middle school kids after all.)
Once the evening was over, I was paying all the child care workers and gave one girl her $5. She didn't know that she was getting paid for helping, but took the money and walked away. About 2 minutes later, she came back to me and handed me the $5 and said, "I don't want to take this money. I just like to volunteer." At first, I thought that she had told her parents and they told her to give it back. However, I realized that she had come from the opposite direction from where her parents were located. Her parents were busy helping clean up and could not have possibly had a conversation with her in that short time. She did this from the kindness of her heart.
As I thought about this, I thought about how amazing that was, especially coming from an 5th grader. She served simply for the joy of serving, not because she was going to get something out of it.
This really made me think about how often I do things for what I am going to get out of it instead of doing something simply because it serves someone else or because it is the right thing to do. I also wonder what kind of world we would live in if everyone adopted the heart of this 5th grade girl and just did one thing everyday simply for the joy of serving and not expecting anything in return.
I think we all have a few things to learn from the heart of this 5th Grader.
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