The Golden Rule...

Sometime instead of teaching my kids the Golden Rule I want to teach them an Eye for an Eye. It seems that I can overlook rejection from others if it's only done to me, but I bristle when it comes to the way people treat my kids. It's a sad day when the parents are worse about playing favorites or popularity than the kids.

We live in Reality TV reality. We form "alliances with the like minded" and formulate plots against those we want to eliminate. My family just moved to a new neighborhood (recently built) so everybody is getting to know each other. I knew from the start that we would not fit in, but I just assumed that we (the kids) would still make friends. And, I knew that God had place us here to witness and minister to others. What I did not know is that it would be this hard for me or them. I didn't know that moving here would be training ground for learning how to deal with rejection and loving people in spite of the way they treat you. One example of this happened this morning. Our neighbors came to the door and asked if the kids could come out and play. Sure we'll be right out, but before we could get outside the kids who had asked us to play were invited to someone else house and were allowed to go. This kind of thing happens alot and my 5 year old son doesn't even want to play with the boys because he gets left out all the time.

Like I said though this has given me lots of teaching moments about loving people like Jesus loved them. He was rejected and mistreated and unpopular. But, He was loving and kind and forgiving. It's hard to watch your children be hurt time and again, but God is the healer of all wounds and I'm glad that they know Jesus. So, I am trying to teach them that they should treat others the way they want to be treated. Hopefully, this will help them to be kinder and more courteous people. I'm still very sad that as adults we are bombarded with this popularity message so much that we have become like the reality shows we watch and we're passing it on to our children. I'm telling you it's time to turn the TV off and get the book out and let the Word transform our hearts and change our lives. We have sold out to the message of the world too long, and we are becoming a society of mean people.