I had an interesting experience yesterday that is worth sharing. At church we are assigned families to check on and to help spiritually and physically. I am assigned a single lady who uses wood to heat her home to reduce costs. She was out of wood so yesterday I arranged to go and get some. Prior to going I stopped by her son's house, who lives three houses down. Her son is about my age. As I walked up I noted that he had a small amount of firewood himself. He was not home so I went with two of my boys to get the wood. We came back to her house and proceeded to unload and stack the wood. It takes a while to unload and stack wood when your help is a 9 year old girl (her daughter), and 7 and 3 year old boys :). At some point her son came home (I think while we were unloading), but did not come over to help unload the wood. I will confess that I was also frustrated by the situation. I took the lead on helping this dear lady while her physically capable son has wood and is not taking care of his mother. Now it is not my place to judge her son, and perhaps he has challenges I don't know about, but it is hard for me to think of any reasons why he should not take care of his mother. It is our duty to help our family and to not allow that burden to be shifted to others until we have done everything in our power.
Thinking about this experience has caused me to think about my parents and how well/or not well I take care of them. It is easy to take advantage of those we love and to be selfish. I hope that I can teach my boys to take responsibility for their family. I am grateful for the opportunity that I had to spend that time with my sons and to teach them about service and manhood.
David Blunck
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