round two, October 17, 2009

forgot to add, I am reading a very good book titled "Too Small to Ignore" by Wes Stafford.  He is the CEO of Compassion International, and in it he relates his upbringing in a village in the Ivory Coast of West Africa, and his view of children and how we bring them up and how we don't bring them up, and the mission call to value children right now, as they are, at any age.  He talks of how in the West we separate our children from our ongoing lives thru toy's, sitters, the hunt for money to support the lifestyle choices we make, and the damage it can do to our kids.  I am only thru a small part of it, so I cannot judge the whole book.  However, I wholeheartedly would recommend it to anyone who works with kids, has kids, is around kids or deals with them in any way....pretty much everyone.    It has opened my eyes to facet's of my own upbringing, and how I brought up, or didn't bring up, my son's.  If we would engage our kids in the way he recommends, not seek the worldly stuff beyond what is truly enough, not beyond it to what we "simply must have", our lives, our children's lives, and our communities would be changed, I am fairly sure.   The Bible calls us to talk of the issues of life as we walk, sit and spend time with our families, and this is what he is advocating.   Not just to talk about life, but to actually live our lives with our kids, getting them engaged in what we do and how we do it, and affirming them as important parts of our lives and our families as early as possible.  just wanted to give a shout out for a book that has showed me a lot in not many pages.