It's MONDAY!

It's the beginning of a whole new week!
How will you spend your time this week?

Few of us start the week with intentions to make somebody angry or to offend people in the coming days. Few of us start the week with an uncaring attitude about people that are hurting or in some type of distress.
Few of us start the week with the idea of being apathetic to the needs of the people around us.

Of course...
Few of us start the week with intentions to make somebody happy or to encourage people.
Few of us start the week looking for ways to minister to people in need.
Few of us start the week with eyes wide open, looking for opportunities to care for those that are un-cared for.

I'll share a couple of the things that I'm doing this week.

In the past few months, I occasionally pay for the person behind me in the Starbucks' Drive thru. I figure it will give them a good start to their day and it makes me feel good, too. It's not too often and it's only a couple of bucks. I'll probably do that at least once this week.

I've started a plan to send some notes to people that have impacted my life and encourage me. I have few people that I really respect and that I consider to be close friends. I think that I have failed to express how much I value these relationships in the past and don't want to continue with that particular failure. Over the course of the next few weeks or months, I plan to send one or two notes per week to these people.

I know that there are plenty of people with real needs that I can do nothing about.
But there are also people that simply need a positive word of encouragement. Some of them need to be forgiven for an offense; most of them need to forgive themselves. Some of us need to learn to forgive others and move on.

I want to say that it's not hard to care...but it is. It takes an effort to see the needs and it takes a motivated heart to genuinely care. It is unnatural to care about the needs of others--at least for a grumpy old curmudgeon like me.

Some of you are list makers; I am not. If you are a list maker, why not put a random act of kindness on your list (it won't make it less meaningful to plan a random act)? Why not plan to send an encouraging email, text or card to somebody? Why not say thank you to somebody that has encouraged you in the past?

List maker or not, why not plan something to lift up another person this week?
The whole week is ahead of us. We have lots of time.

Share your plans.
Share your accomplishments.

John <><