Thought of the Day 05.03.10

A friend of mine and his wife like to spend her birthday taking a vacation without their teenage kids. Unfortunately, the children don’t like this because they want to celebrate mom’s birthday on her birthday, not a few days later when they return. Now their relatives have joined the kids in criticizing my friends for being so selfish.

To his credit, my friend first told me about this by way of asking whether I thought he and his wife were doing anything wrong. I assured him they were not. The purpose of celebrating mom’s birthday is to honor mom in a way she will most appreciate. When the people who claim to love her complain that her way of wanting to be honored isn’t satisfying to them, they betray their confusion over who is really being celebrated.

But we all tend to make this mistake. And we must continually ask ourselves whether we’re truly honoring God by giving Him the gifts and service He want to receive or whether we’re merely claiming to want to honor Him by giving Him the ones we want to give? It’s just so easy to misidentify selfishness as love.