Reaching Out...

Another one of the goals for these 45 days is to focus on others. When we laid out the guidelines we had in mind "our neighbor". That is a big guideline and encompasses just about everyone. I have been feeling overwhelmed by this portion of our fast and have spent some significant time thinking about it. How do you serve "your neighbor" and still uphold the other goals of the fast (most directly, spending)?

And the excuses begin...

I feel like we volunteer regularly. I am on a greeting team at our church and Steve and I co-teach a class once a month. We are generally helpful to people we know providing meals in times of need or helping out in other ways.

But what about people we don't know. The more I think about it the more I realize that this is an area that we are pretty weak in. We have a general sense of who our immediate neighbors are and what they do for a living, but we have never gone out of our way to serve them. Why? Well, I guess I always thought it took money but really, it takes time. It costs me nothing to make some cookies and drop them off to someone. Or actually set a date to have the neighbors over for dinner, we have talked with them about doing that after all. We have no difficulty with the introduction, it is the follow through where we are hung up.


Take Action!

So, that is what I am going to do. Sometime in the next 7 days I am going to go to our neighbors (Amy, Andrew and their son Owen) and get a date on the calendar for dinner. No more procrastinating and making excuses.

Is there something you have been putting off or just making excuses to not do? It's time to seize the day, for we know not how many we have left!