What You And I Have In Common With My 7 Year Old

My daughter decided on Sunday afternoon (with the encouragement of KidStuf’s very own Mr. Take-Out) that she wanted to collect clothes for people who were hurt by the recent ATL floods. Awesome! Definitely one of those proud parent moments. She spent Sunday night and Monday designing the flyer to try to get others to donate clothes. On Wednesday she started (not finished) putting the flyer on every mailbox in our neighborhood. My wife also emailed our neighborhood to let them know what she is doing…and so they wouldn’t get mad about the flyers. By that afternoon she had already collected five bags of clothes. Then this morning happened.

At breakfast this morning, Julie shared the great news that one of our neighbors had emailed overnight to say they would be donating some clothes. It was a neighbor my daughter knew. Julie and I were excited! Our daughter was very upset. Why? Because she knew she had not put a flyer on their mailbox yet. She did not want them giving clothes unless she had given them a flyer.

In just a few days, she had lost focus of why she was doing what she is doing. She’s collecting clothes for people who may have lost everything they own. A beautiful vision. But she quickly got distracted. Now, she’s seven years old, so I cut her some slack. But you and I do the same thing all the time. Insider churched people are skilled at this.

How many churches, ministries, projects, etc. have you seen started for all the right reasons? But at some point the people most involved in this “thing” begin to get more focused on how it’s getting done. Or they start caring more about distractions and stop paying attention to what they are trying to accomplish. And the more they focus on the how or the distractions and the less they focus on the why or the goal, the less effective the “thing” becomes. And eventually it stops being effective all together. It’s finished. All because they lost focus and started caring about the wrong things.

Stop caring whether or not the people got the flyer first. Celebrate that they are giving clothes to people who have lost everything.

(By the way, if you’d like to donate money, clothing, etc. to ATL flood victims, go to hopeATL.com.)