Teach me to give...

It's winter. We're pasty white and one of us is getting larger by the week so there are no fun pictures to share right now. We've been battling sickness and bad attitudes regarding the lack of sunshine in Northeast Ohio. It's that blah time of year. But today there was a ray of hope in my day. Ethan talks quite a bit about 'helping the orphans'. I'm not sure how much he really understands but he does know that children matter to his mommy and that orphans stir her heart. Today he mentioned wanting to help the orphans and give all the money in his piggy bank to them so I decided to go with it. My mind was racing with who I could have him give his money to in the near future and I was drawing a blank. Then I thought about how my good buddies Diane and Karen are preparing to run the full marathon in Cleveland in May for Team Hope and how he could give his money to them. They haven't really started their fund raising yet but he wanted them to have his money now...like today if possible! He climbed up on a chair and grabbed his talking piggy bank and brought it to the kitchen table. He went to our desk and grabbed two envelopes and a pen and he sat down and started to write. He wasn't asking for help so I just worked on some things in the kitchen while he worked at the table. Before long he held up one envelope with great pride. It read, "For Krun". He had done his best to sound out 'For Karen' and I thought he was pretty darn close. He asked for some help in writing 'For Diane' on the second envelope. Then he emptied the piggy bank and started dividing his coins between the two envelopes. He wanted to give it all and I was content with letting him. I hope we can raise him to realize that we have so much more than we could ever need and we should give richly to others. I also hope that God uses his love of orphans in a mighty way someday. It warms my heart so much to think of my child, who was once an orphan himself, loving on those who are in the place he once found himself.
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress... James 1:27