Cheating the Church

Many people are probably familiar with Andy Stanley's belief that if you have to choose between cheating the church and cheating your family, you should cheat the church. Not that we give God less than our best. Not that we do less than our very best as we serve our ministries. But God didn't place us in charge of the church (that's Jesus' job); he placed us in charge of our families.

I don't believe I was stretching that concept at all when I ditched the office for two hours yesterday and went sledding with one of my close friends and our daughters. He showed me the good hills that, being a newbie to Morris, I wouldn't know about.

My five-year old, Katy loves to ride down the hills but isn't crazy about walking back up them. So at one point, while Steve and I and his girls were sledding, she was just hanging out at the bottom, making snow angels and such. Well I'm half way back up the hill when I turn around to check on her...it was like a scene out of some 'stranded in a desert' movie.

Katy had made her way some 40 feet away from where she'd been playing, with only a trail of footprints leading to the site of her collapse--face down in the snow. If I'd had a camera, the photo would look like the scene of some tragic accident, but in reality it was just my overly dramatic daughter (I have NO idea where she gets that) trying to get Daddy's attention. She was fine of course, and giggled when I pulled her up out of the snow. She actually got a piggy-back ride back up the hill for her effort.

I believe that God was glad I skipped my job to spend some time at my real job. No church ministry will ever warrant the attention that we must, as parents, pour into our kids. I'm glad I cheated!

What a great day.