The Care Projectنموونە

Introduction

This 7-day devotional/project is part of a larger 40-day journey of creating a new habit of caring for people. These seven days are samples of topics we cover in our book, The Care Project. It aims to provide 40 days of activities that focus your efforts on noticing people, intentional help, and meaningful words of encouragement that show care for others - a lost quality in our world today. By intentionally focusing on others in an extended period of time, we pray you'll develop new habits of thoughtfulness and love for others around you.

Why Bother? No One Cares.

It’s hard to develop a discipline of kindness when we’ve been starved for it for so long. They call it “hangry” for a reason, right? I feel unappreciated, so I withhold appreciation from others. As a result, they feel unappreciated, and they withhold. Now, we’ve created a snowball effect that removes kindness altogether from our culture. Someone must break the cycle. And by “someone”, I mean us.

"Us" is the operative word here. Appreciation is a lost art. That’s why we begin by connecting with friends who make caring for us a priority. When we have people caring for us, we don’t have to go looking for validation every time we show care to another person. Kindness breeds kindness. Our ongoing steps to change our mindset about thoughtfulness will feed into the actions of others. The snowball can now roll in a more positive direction.

For example, someone gives you a thoughtful gift. Your natural response is thankfulness, and you send them a thank you card. They receive the card and feel appreciated by you. They want to express how much it means to them to be appreciated by you. How far are you both willing to take this? At some point, the cards and texts have to stop, but the sentiment is still valid - care breeds care.

Caring for people is the secret weapon of the church - by creating a culture of thoughtfulness within the Body of Christ, we make Christ much more appealing to the world around us - a world that is starving for that kind of influence in their own lives.

DAILY OPPORTUNITY

What are you doing in your relationships that tend to go unappreciated? Take a moment to thank God for doing those things for you.