Blog
Morgan Daniels has become a Mom on Mission. This didn’t come overnight or without its challenges, but in the following words, she shares the difference it has made in their family.
Our morning started with, “No! don’t eat the shaving cream!” – all while I held my sweet, crying son who decided not to participate in the day’s mission project. It wasn’t the picture-perfect start to our day, but just the reality of raising toddlers represented in front of us. Together, a group of mom friends, charged by God with raising these precious children, dedicated our morning to being moms on mission. We took time from our usually busy mornings to help our children be tiny missionaries that displayed God’s love through their creativity.
In the years of raising my young kids I have found that it’s easy to become buried by the diapers, tantrums and marathon dinners and think to myself, “In a few more years, I’ll have more time to teach them about being the hands and feet of Jesus.” We teach our kids to be forgiving, kind, and loving like Jesus, but what about missionary Jesus? I’m reminded of the times when I’ve said children “are way smarter than we give them credit for, more capable.” To follow my own advice, I decided that our kids were not too young or incapable of understanding this important side of our Lord’s work.
I want our family to be a family on constant mission for Jesus. What a gift God has given us with our families, a chance to be the first people to cultivate God’s love in our children’s hearts. My desire is to show my children that I am in constant pursuit of God. Let us be intentional in finding ways to bless others. By pouring our love on others through acts of service we provide our children a tangible example of what it means to be the hands and feet of Jesus.
Our family mission journey has started, small and realistic of course, but it’s started. We’ve been teaching our children about the love Jesus had for the sick, widowed, and lost. We have seen the passion of service arise in our four-year-old daughter as she makes something for a teacher she’s never met. We see her gifts develop before our eyes, and are beginning to see how God has uniquely designed her to love on others. The concept of looking outward can be hard for young children to grasp but we prayerfully want them to develop a natural desire, not felt out of obligation, but out of love for others.
So, I encourage you to guide your children down the path of servanthood, no matter their age. We are instructed to lead them in the way they should go. Let us show our children what it means to love our neighbors, strangers, the broken and under-appreciated, to love like Jesus loves us. We can help nurture their desire to reach beyond themselves and be the living proof that God moves in even the tiniest of ways.