Daily Sheet: Day 116: Truthfulness
Family Book: “The Day Jimmy’s Boa Ate the Wash”
Travel: Bolivia
Video: “Different Kinds of Happy” – Sara Groves (live, with introduction)
Tag Archives: Compassion
Day 109: Peacefulness
Daily Sheet: Day 109: Peacefulness
Family Book: “Where the Poppies Now Grow”
Travel: Algeria; Tunisia
Song: “God and Country” – Gungor
“You can take my money, take my land, but not my son!
…Those who live by the gun, die by the gun.”
Day 101: Belief
Daily Sheet: Day 101: Belief
Family Book: “I Believe: The Nicene Creed”
Travel: Congo
Video: “Creed” – Rich Mullins (with introduction by Rich)
I hope I would leave a legacy of joy; a legacy of real compassion. Because I think there is a great joy in real compassion. I don’t think that you can know joy apart from caring deeply about people, caring enough about people that you actually do something. But I have a feeling like if my life is motivated by my ambition to leave a legacy, what I will probably leave as a legacy is ambition. But if my life is motivated by the power of the Spirit in me, if I live in the awareness of the indwelling Christ, if I allow His presence to guide my actions, to guide my motives, those sorts of things, that’s the only time I think that we really leave a great legacy. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. My ambition to be a good guy is a fleshly ambition. And when Christ calls us to take up our cross and follow him, a lot of us think that what that means is we’re supposed to lay down our vices, and we’re supposed to cling to virtues, but I think that unless Christ is Lord of our virtues, our virtues become dangerous to us and dangerous to the people around us. I think that when Christ calls us to take up our cross, what He means is you must die not only to whatever vices are in your life, which he will eventually kill out, you must also die to whatever virtues are in your life. Your life is not valuable because you are an articulate speaker, your life is not valuable because you are a generous person, your life is not valuable because of any of that. If we empty ourselves of everything and allow God to be present, then it’s no longer us, it’s Him. Then it becomes a spiritual thing. And that which is born of the Spirit is Spirit. And that’s when I think Christianity really begins to make sense.
Video: “Creed” – Rich Mullins with Third Day (with Croatian subtitles)
Day 93: Kindness
Daily Sheet: Day 93: Kindness
Family Book: “The Watcher”
Travel: Zimbabwe
Video: “All the Ways You Wander” – John Spillane
…And if you take the long way, if you take the long way home, down where the magicians and the dreamers roam, through the mountains of morning, through the valleys of night, searching for the island of your heart’s delight,
I’ll wait for you, like a true friend. I’ll wait for you, ’til the very end.
Video: “Kindness”
Video: “12 Year Old Boy Helps Homeless People in Los Angeles”
“I might only have one match, but I can make an explosion.”
Video: “12 Year Old Boy Helping More Homeless People in L.A.”
Video: “14 Year Old Boy Helping More Homeless People in L.A.”
Elliot Katz, the boy in the last three videos above, was inspired in part to form his charity organization, ReachingOutCalifornia, by the following verse:
“And whoever saves a life, it is considered as if he saved an entire world.” – Mishnah Sanhedrin 4:9; Yerushalmi Talmud.
Put in context, the passage reads as follows:
…We find in regard to Cain, who killed his brother, “The bloods of your brother scream out!” (Genesis 4:10) – the verse does not say blood of your brother, but bloods of your brother, because it was his blood and also the blood of his future offspring [screaming out]! [The judges’ speech continues] “It was for this reason that man was first created as one person [Adam], to teach you that anyone who destroys a life is considered by Scripture to have destroyed an entire world; and anyone who saves a life is as if he saved an entire world.”
Questions:
- The Talmud, from which the Mishnah Sanhedrin passage is taken, is a Jewish writing. Compare these verses to Jesus’s words as recorded in Luke 9:24:
If you try to hang on to your life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it. (New Living Translation – NLT)
- “The Watcher” is written as a poem. Describe the format.
Day 89: Empathy
Daily Sheet: Day 89: Empathy
Family Book: “The Long March: The Chocktaw’s Gift to Irish Famine Relief”
Travel: Oklahoma; Texas
Song: “Why It Matters” – Sara Groves (with lyrics)
Sit with me and tell me once again of the story that’s been told us, of the power that will hold us, of the beauty, of the beauty, Why it matters.
Speak to me until I understand why our thinking and creating, why our efforts of narrating about the beauty, of the beauty, And why it matters.
Like the statue in the park of this war torn town, and its protest of the darkness and the chaos all around, with its beauty, how it matters, How it matters.
Show me the love that never fails, the compassion and attention midst confusion and dissension, like small ramparts for the soul, How it matters.
Like a single cup of water, How it matters.
Questions:
- Compare “empathy” to “sympathy.” Which is more meaningful? Why?
- Why do you think the story of Jesus raising the widow’s son was chosen for “Empathy” rather than for “Compassion?”
- Think about the story of “The Long March” while you re-read the bolded lines at the end of Sara Groves’ song, “Why It Matters.” How do you think the Chocktaw’s act of kindness, inspired by empathy, might have built “small ramparts for the soul”? And what is the “single cup of water” reference?
Day 64: Courtesy
Daily Sheet: Day 64: Courtesy
Family Book: “Plume”
Travel: Puerto Rico; St. Kitts and Nevis; Antigua and Barbuda; Dominica; St. Lucia; St. Vincent and the Grenadines; Barbados; Grenada; Trinidad and Tobago
Day 63: Compassion
Daily Sheet: Day 63: Compassion
Family Book: “South”
Travel: Mexico; Guatemala; Belize
Video: “How Deep the Father’s Love for Us” – Adam Young (Owl City)
Day 62: Virtue
Daily Sheet: Day 62: Virtue
Family Book: “Circles of Hope”
Travel: Jamaica; Cayman Islands; Haiti; Dominican Republic; Cuba
Song: “Without Love” – Sara Groves
Video: “Glory Is Here” – Gungor (set against images of clouds as seen from the air)
Day 17: Tender-Heartedness
Daily Sheet: Day 17: Tender-Heartedness
Family Book: “I Am A Bear”
Travel: Eritrea, Ethiopia
Hymn: “Of The Father’s Love Begotten” – Acapella
Hymn: “Of The Father’s Love Begotten” – Instrumental, Fernando Ortega
Video: “I Saw What I Saw” – Sara Groves (official video of her trip to Rwanda)
Video: “I Saw What I Saw” – Sara Groves (Sendafa, Ethiopia)
Video: Stories of Persecution: Eritrea (Passion)
Read Aloud (this is a chapter book that can be read to younger kids over several days or that older children can read on their own): “The Family Under the Bridge”
Character core curriculum 
