Wednesday, February 20, 2008

Peaceful Contentment - Mercy

We’re still talking about allowances for our children and how we use it as a tool to encourage contentment. I’ve talked about the idea of gratitude, and our desire to instill it in our children, but like all spiritual development, we hope it will manifest itself in practical ways. We hope that helping them learn to receive all material benefits with gratitude and thanksgiving will help them be generous and merciful as well.

Mercy is a key attribute of any true follower of Jesus. Just as God, in Christ, was merciful to us, and Christ in turn had compassion upon the masses who came to Him, so we desire that our family, ourselves and our children to be merciful in our dealings with others. To that end, we sponsor children in the developing world through Compassion. My wife and I have been involved since our first years of marriage and on the occasion of a Marshling turning five; we begin sponsoring a child of the same gender and birth-date. So far, Emily and Timothy have benefited greatly from corresponding with their sponsored children, from praying for them, and from contributing to their sponsorship financially. Our hope is that as they grow and they are better able to afford it, they will begin to take on more and more of the financial support of their ‘adopted’ siblings.

If you’ve ever wondered about how to assist the developing world, consider sponsoring a child through Compassion. It’s only $35 a month, which supplies food, shelter, education and unapologetic instruction in the Christianity. One of the consequences of living lives of contented gratitude is a desire to mercifully help those in need. Compassion has been a great way from our family to do that.

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