Salt and Light

I always wanted to have the house that all of the neighborhood kids hang out at. You know, so I could stay on top of my children, know who their friends are, where they are, what they're doing. But a while ago it struck me that this is also a great way to evangelize.

Now, I don't mean that I am proselytizing to all of the children. We rarely speak religion to them at all, aside from including them in grace before meals should they stay on for dinner. But our house is clearly a Christian house, and moreover, specifically Catholic. We have crucifixes in every room, pictures of the Blessed Mother, and the chalk board in the kitchen boasts different inspirational sayings, scripture verses, or whatever the Holy Spirit has moved me to jot up there each day. Right now it says, " Live a life that is pleasing to God.". So there is no mistaking that we are a family dedicated to loving and serving the Lord.

It's interesting that I mentioned meals though because, specifically, this is how I've chosen to encourage kids to play here. I feed them. I can't tell you how many times my kids have been gone for the afternoon playing and come home starving because they'd had no snack. Now I don't expect anyone to feed them and I try to teach them only to accept a snack if offered and not go around begging for food. But I mention it merely to illustrate that these kids aren't used to being given snacks while out playing. And I have boys, so you know that they and their friends are always hungry.

When my oldest son first developed a social life I felt put out always feeding kids. Someone was always in my kitchen staring longingly at my pantry door and at first it annoyed me. But one day it occurred to me that Jesus' admonishment to feed the hungry could easily apply to these growing boys and girls. And while I'm not rich I can certainly afford a few bags of popcorn for popping or a frozen pizza for everyone to split. I started buying food with snacking in mind. And now we always keep a 2 gallon pitcher of lemonade (the powder mix bought in bulk) in the fridge as well. My hope is that one day these kids will say to themselves, " Remember that nice family whose door was always open to us, who fed us and treated us as family? I want what they had. I want the joy that filled their hearts. They were very Christian, it must have been that. Let's check that out for ourselves." Like we heard in the Gospel today: be salt and light for the earth. This is one way our family can live those words.

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