Sunday, November 25, 2007

Clothe Yourselves...

It is not too uncommon for our family to enjoy a wonderful morning at church, you know, learning to be more Christ-like, but the moment we get in the car the lessons to which we have just nodded our heads over in eager agreement go out the window in favor of the fruits of the flesh:
"Knock it off, boys!"
"You're going to watch HOW MUCH football today?"
"I said, stop touching your brother!"
Argue. Argue. Selfish. Selfish. Me-me-me-me-me.

Well, today Ryan and I lead a portion of our church's Family Sunday School class. Our job was to lead songs and teach the group Colossians 3:12: Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves in compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. You can guess, then, what our ride home from church was like. Well, actually you can't because something very different happened.

On a route we do not usually take, we were stopped at an intersection where a man with a cane, on the opposite side of the intersection, was trying to cross in the crosswalk. He walked with the severe limp of a stroke victim. Head down, his dissheveled white beard and hair kept us from seeing his face. His signal turned to the solid red hand, and he was just barely half way across. The cars waiting to turn left were stuck because he was directly in front of them. The man, in his panic, was trying in vein to keep moving forward but the harder he tried, the less cooperative his legs were. Though he was moving his legs at a furious pace, he hardly moved an inch forward. Everyone at the intersection just watched from their cars as the man struggled.

No, not everyone. My husband jumped out, jogged across the intersection ("What is dad doing? Where is dad going?" the kids asked.). The family - the whole intersection - watched Ryan kindly, compassionately and patiently take this man's arm with great dignity. "Let me help you, sir," I imagine he must have said. The man, Garrett, immediately responded and began to take normal strides and complete his walk across the street. I just sat there with profound admiration. I was astounded at the act. It is an act well within his (or anyone's) capacity, but it astounded me none-the-less. I just sat there, so thankful to the Lord that our boys could see their father demonstrate such Christ-like behavior.

Today Ryan was a living example to the kids of how we are to clothe ourselves: with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience. Awesome. Truly awesome.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Wow Jenne! That is an amazing story. Thanks for sharing it. What a great guy you have:)

About the girls sharing a room....well...we had them together for about 2 weeks and I would say that there were probably 2 nights that they slept in there together the whole night through. Grace kept waking at 2 or 3 am and see Hope and want to play with her or talk to her. I think she is just too young still..?? (17 months.) Anyways, I am in no hurry. We have plenty of room for them to have there own rooms for now and I like when my children are sleeping the regular 12 hour nights! (Call me selfish I guess)
I would love for them to share eventually, just when Grace is a bit older. Thanks for asking!

Ginger said...

Jenne,
What awesome role models our men are! I pray our boys will grow up and follow in their Daddy's footprints!

Megan said...

That is really neat! At church on Sunday, Vergil talked about being a doer of the Word. Ryan did exactly that. Thanks for sharing.

Diane said...

Random acts of Kindness, we should all learn from Ryan's act.
:-)