Redeem Their Ground…At Home Too!

Although we’re going to invest in redeeming the ground for the kids at Beat the Drum in Kenya…that’s certainly not where it has to start or end. Helping redeem the ground of neighbors or friends…or someone we barely know…is a great way to pay it forward too. It doesn’t have to be overseas…and in fact, if all it is is cutting a check and checking it off our list, I’d question how much it’s really doing in the bigger scheme of things.

I hope that this year my family is characterized by looking past ourselves and keeping our eyes open to finding ways to help redeem the ground of others who are put in our path.  Just thinking about it as I was driving down my street today, there are a ton of things our family could do right in our own neighborhood…as simple as raking the leaves of one of our widowed neighbors.  It doesn’t have to be complicated, but could significantly impact the life of someone else.

We’ve been on the receiving end of these types of gestures and have benefited from them both practically and relationally. For instance: a neighbor showing up with a homemade pie to welcome us to the neighborhood that we shared during an impromptu picnic…starting a new friendship; friends showing up to clear a fallen tree that crushed our pergola and backyard; and a neighbor willing to help with a tool, insight, or an extra set of hands on projects I couldn’t have done by myself.  I don’t think these kinds of things happen enough any more…but they should.  I hope we’ll see to it that it does in our little corner of the world…and I hope you will too.

So it’s here, in the Redeem Their Ground section of the RYGblog, where we’ll share those stories…ours and yours.  So please share how you’ve reached out to help redeem the ground of someone else or plan to this year.  Doing so may just inspire us to do the same.

Take care,