Learning from the Best!

We had the opportunity to travel to my hometown over the weekend. It is quite the celebration of events for the annual Red Oak Junction Days. One thing that I seem to take for granted is the simplicity of joy that comes from my kids when they visit Red Oak. They love that they get to stay in the house where my parents brought me home as a baby, walking (not driving) places, & checking out the parks in town. But at Junction Days..they absolutely love the Grand Parade.


Here the kids are at the parade with their cousins anxiously awaiting the start of the parade. One of their cousins does not appreciate the sirens on all of the firetrucks that arrive from a 60 mile radius. However, he does like the candy. Quite a conflict for a 6 year old. But we witnessed a beautiful display of love and selflessness in Luke at the start of that parade. Luke ran out and acquired just one piece of candy, stopped, looked at it, and ran it over to his cousin who was standing away from the street attempting to get away from the noise. I stood there, completely in awe of his kindness, thinking of others first personality. It was at that moment when I realized how much I could learn from Luke. And possibly how much we all can learn from Luke. When was the last time I gave to someone else first without first thinking of myself and weighing all of the factors first. The abundance of candy that all of the kids collected was quite impressive, however, from the start he did not know how much he was going to get and he was concerned that his cousin first. Someone later told me that Jeremy and I must be doing something right as parents. My response was, no, I think we were blessed with Luke to be a part of our family to teach us more how to be like Christ and and how to be better parents with the grace we see in front of us everyday.