Hey wait, don't throw that out...

When you purge your belongings, its always hard to know where to start, especially if the task seems overwhelming due to the amount of stuff you have to sort through. I write with the awareness that one man's junk is another man's treasure. After our garage sale this summer, I hauled the leftovers to the curb for the Monday morning trash pickup. A guy pulls up and asks if he could have the BBQ grill, which wasn't even a part of the sale. I was just getting rid of the rusty of piece of metal. He drove away like he had found a brand new one. A blog buddy [stepchild] wrote my thoughts on the whole matter of kids. We have been doing church simply, in our home with a few other couples, for about a year and a half now. Invariably, when people (always churchgoers) find out what we are doing, the first question is "what about the kids?" Like a smartalek, I say "what about them?" What they usually mean is, how do the kids learn about the God and Jesus and the Bible with out the church as we know it. I hide my offense in their assumption that I am insufficient to lead my children to awareness of those truths. I have to keep in mind that I have been sorting through my pile labeled "Children and Faith" for quite some time now. So when a collector looks at the things I've discarded at the curb, an honest first reaction is to scramble and try to save the precious things from destruction. I don't need them anymore, so I don't put up too much of an argument. What I've kept and taking with me on the journey is a belief that children should be children. Let them play, imagine, create, explore and mostly, learn the way children learn, by watching what Mom and Dad do. Try as we may, but there will never be a greater force on our children than their parents. As a Dad, I take this very seriously.