Good in the World

Kids, grandkids and great-grandkids

Earlier this week our family gathered to celebrate Father's Day with my dad.  We had a good time together, and I enjoyed seeing all the faces at the table.  After the meal I said to Dad, "You have good kids, good grandkids, good great-grandkids. What a great thing!"

After coming home I thought some more about this comment.  Yes, my dad (and of course, my mom) has a lot of good people in his family-- four kids, eleven grandkids, and nine great-grandkids.  Dad's descendants are living or at work in far-flung places like Canada, Ukraine and Bulgaria, Georgia and Colorado, Florida and Indiana.  We also inhabit not so far-flung places like Dayton, Dunlap and Chattanooga. But all these good people are not just good people.  They are good people adding good to the world.

In some places they are preaching the Gospel and calling people to salvation.  In other places they are bettering the lives of people through education and health care. Others are ending the oppression of poverty and racial injustice in the lives of those they touch.  Many work in and through their churches to better their communities and share a portion of their income to support important work that they care about.

All this good has as its foundation the home my dad built with my mom.  They came together to make a home that honored Jesus Christ and nurtured us all to become the good people we are.  I'm so glad to be his daughter, and so pleased to be counted in the number of his descendants who are working every day to make this world a better place.