Don’t get shot helping others!

Merry Christmas!

In a minute, my family is heading to the nearby ski resort to take our 16-month-old daughter tubing and to do some snowmobiling. (I have a strange feeling my wife won’t trust me with our daughter on the tube, but I’ll soon find out.)

Since it’s Christmastime I’m going to keep today’s post rather short and give you just a quick funny thought:

Every year, my family sponsors a less fortunate family in our community (we usually find them through our church). We help them out with Christmas gifts, Christmas breakfast and dinner if they need it. I know a lot of folks do this too and I believe this is a great tradition for anyone that has the means to do so.

Well, a close friend of mine sponsors a family every year also, and they involve the entire family (he has 6 kids and 23 grandkids.) He says it’s a wonderful family event that especially shows the grandkids the importance of helping and serving others.

My friend even goes as far as to have someone dress up as Santa Claus and have “Santa” and the entire family deliver the gifts to the family they’re helping out. He said this year they all arrived at the person’s home ready to deliver the gifts but the homeowner wasn’t there.

The grandkids were sitting in the car because it was cold while all of the adults were in the driveway trying to figure out what they were going to do. They didn’t want to just leave a huge stack of gifts on their porch out in the open but they also didn’t know how long they would have to wait for someone to come home.

All of the sudden a car came down the street and stopped at the bottom of the driveway. The driver started honking the horn and yelling at them to get out of the driveway.

My friend said the person was incredibly mad, until one of the  women in the group quickly ran up to the driver and explained they were there to drop off the gifts for the family. The angry family in the car was obviously embarrassed and quickly apologized.

Apparently, they’d had problems with their neighbors loitering and drinking in their driveway and the family thought the neighbors were having another “party” in their driveway.

Now, my friend joked that at first the woman was so mad he thought she was going to run them over or pull out a gun and shoot them. Clearly, that didn’t happen…

But my point is, never forget how strange life can be and always stay vigilant. Even though, if I had to guess, if you get gunned down delivering Christmas gifts to a family in need you’ve got a guaranteed pass to heaven… I still wouldn’t chance it though… so keep yourself safe wherever you go and whatever you do this Christmas.