Besides my two favorite Christmas things (the lights and the music), there are always very meaningful lessons and talks given at Christmas time. Two of the talks given at our church today were about service. I wanted to share a brief story that was given. It is not even really a Christmas story, but just more of a "life story".
The gentleman that was speaking told about when he was a boy he would work for his grandfather, hoeing the corn field. He grandfather always assigned 1 boy to each field. He knew that if he assigned 1 boy to 1 field he would get 1 days work from that boy. If he assigned 2 boys to 1 field he would get half a days work from the 2 boys together. If he assigned 3 boys to 1 field, he wouldn't get any work from the 3 boys :) (I'm sure that A1 is lol about now)
He went on to tell, that one day someone asked the grandfather why he didn't just use his machinery to take care of the field, rather than the boys. The grandfather replied, "I am not trying to grow the best corn in the town. I am trying to grow the best boys in the town." I think his plan worked.
One of his main points here was to teach children to work and to serve others. Include them in your holiday service projects. Let them experience the joy of working and also the joy of giving. A story from another talk about service, was about the impression made on young girl by her father including her in a secret Santa project. At the time the young girl didn't really understand the situation, but she understood the good feelings she had from "giving". We would plan secret Santa outings with our children- they always enjoyed those times and I think it provided them with a desire to continue "giving" even now that they have families of their own.
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