Start Good Deeds at Home

In 1972 the Carpenters sang:

“No one in the world ever had a love as sweet as my love.
For nowhere in the world could there be a boy as true as you love.
All my love, I give gladly to you.
All your love, you give gladly to me.
Tell me why then, Oh why should it be that
We go on hurting each other.
We go on hurting each other.
Making each other cry,
Hurting each other,
Without ever knowing why…
Can’t we stop hurting each other.
Gotta stop hurting each other.
Breaking each others’ hearts,
Tearing each other apart.”

It was their seventh single release and their sixth consecutive Gold Single. Why does such a song make it to the top? Because too many families can empathize with its message. How easy it is to do good to the folks with whom we work, with our neighbors, with our fellow church members and then get home and treat our family like dirt. Here are the people we claim to love more than life itself. We say we would give anything for them and sacrifice everything for them. However, we yell, scream, misuse, slander, hurt, take for granted and so many other negative things with our family.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can quit giving ourselves permission to take out our selfishness on our spouses, parents and children. We can live the lives of servants zealous for good deeds even in our families. 

A great passage to help with this is Philippians 2:3-4:

“Do nothing from rivalry or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

I need to apply this passage to my wife, my children, my parents, my brothers. If I had sisters, I would need to apply it to them as well. I need to apply it to my aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents. God did not give us these relationships so we could let down our guard and just treat them however comes naturally. He gave us these relationships so we would have a training ground for how to properly treat everyone. That is why Paul uses the way we treat our family as the example for how we should treat everyone in I Timothy 5:1-2. 

“Do not rebuke an older man but encourage him as you would a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, in all purity.“

Good deeds should start at home and spread out from there. If we do that, perhaps we can come up with a new song about how we go on serving each other, helping each other and really loving each other.

ELC