Wednesday: Encouragement (Two Takes and Insight)

 (Griff's Take)

I love you.

You are a great mom, dad, husband, wife, friend, grandparent, or roommate.

Thank you for doing such and such. You have no idea how much this means to me. 

You are the best. 

You mean a great deal to my life.

I am pretty certain that we all enjoy hearing those things. It means a lot to us to discover that we mean something to someone else. 

It's amazing how often we forget to tell those we are closest to that they matter in our lives. We just assume they understand this. 

Take time today to let them know how much they matter. If you can, write this down on notecards and hide it throughout the house. At the very least pull out your cell phone right now and send 5 text messages to let people know you care.

Last Christmas Abby and I started a new family tradition. We bought an Advent calendar and filled each day with a notecard telling Blake something we loved about her and then a piece of candy. We thought she would go straight for the candy and never notice the note. We were right for the first 2 days. The third day everything changed, Blake did not want the candy but instead wanted to carry around that day's note card. She could not read it, but somehow she knew that this card told her how much we thought of her. 

Being encouraged matters to all of us. 

This is one of the times we get to be the voice of God speaking to one another. We get to help God continue to call each of us Beloved Children by speaking grace, truth, and love in encouragement to one another.

It's a challenge given time and time in the New Testament letters. It seems that being part of the Christian community at times means offering encouragement to one another. This is part of being the church.

So take time to be the church and today take time to offer some encouragement. 

(Mike's Take)

 For someone who tends to be more spontaneous in his approach to life it is good to be married to a “list maker,” one of those people who gets up each day and creates an organizational plan. My wife is a master at that, creating lists for all of us so that the structure will bless us with a clear path to effectiveness, while at the same time patiently providing time for creative randomness!

I can remember the first time she left me with the children for a few days. She was scheduled to go to Nova Scotia to do a conference for Smyth and Helwys, and there was simply no way to make a daily commute. Thus, she was forced to entrust me with the family. What a courageous leap of faith she was forced to make! In preparing for her presentations, planning the trip and packing, she also made to-do lists for me and each of the children. It was amazing how detailed they were, down to the daily tasks inherent in running a household. The boys had garbage and lawn duties, Meredith was to pick up her room and make sure the guest room was presentable in case there was an unexpected guest, and I was given a detailed list that would have made a NASA space flight seem rudimentary!

But here is the great thing about all of this – not only did she make lists for us, she made post-it notes for places we needed to visit to make good on our lists. All over the house there were little slips of yellow squares with hearts and smiles and other expressions of encouragement. The kids and I got so tickled at her quality care. In fact, I’ve often thought this wouldn’t be a bad thing to occasionally do just for the fun of it. That is, place post-it notes in places where loved ones frequent, notes that are sources of affection, joy and encouragement. Not only would that be a lot of fun (for giver and receiver), just think of what a difference that would make for your family and others.

Well, I am going to do that myself, but where is it that I put those post-it notes?