Gratitude is humbling

• Published in: Canadian Mennonite (Waterloo) Vol. 12; no. 19; p. 11
• Main Author: Pries-Klassen, Darren
• Format: Magazine Article
• Language: English
• Published: Waterloo Mennonite Publishing Service 29.09.2008
• Subjects: Faith; Mennonites; Parents & parenting; Spirituality
• ISSN: 1480-042X

Don't you love those "eureka" moments? The moments when something happens that makes you jump for joy or do one of those hockey fist-pump things. Let me tell you my latest one. That was it. My "eureka" moment! She had learned generosity. All those years of allowances and dividing it into three little piles had paid off. My job was done and I had been successful in teaching generosity. Mission accomplished. In retrospect, I was more than a little smug in what I thought I had accomplished. I was very grateful that my daughter had made an offering on her own accord. Perhaps she had done so humbly, but I was anything but humbled by it. I had taken the credit for her generosity. As I thought about what I was reading, I remembered something else I once read by Christian educator Richard Foster: "Faith is not taught, it is caught." In other words, we can't make someone have faith, we can only model it in the hope that they will come to embrace it as their own.