This week's Pep Talk: "Deeds and Words"

It was a recent Sunday morning in the Mile High City: a good workout behind me, reading the Denver Post and watching the Broncos host the Kansas City Chiefs in front of me on this chilly mid-November day. I go to Facebook to see what the heck’s happening in the world.

I notice my former wife has posted pictures of our precious daughter. They’re pictures from a while back, before the teen years. Looking at the pictures, my mind wanders to an earlier time, the time of these pictures, when that same daughter arrived home from school, threw her backpack on the kitchen counter and headed off toward her bedroom.

I began to sift through the pack for the school’s “Wednesday Envelope.” Back in the days before mass email communication, this envelope was the school’s weekly link with parents. As I pulled the packet from the pack, I notice another crumpled slip of paper toward the bottom of the backpack. I straightened it out. It was obviously from the weekly children’s Mass held Wednesdays during school hours. It was a poem apparently meant for the kids during the service, it read:

“We are writing our gospel a chapter a day, by the deeds that we do, words that we say; others will read what we write, determine whether it’s faithful and true; what’s the gospel according to you.”

I was impressed and read it again, and again. It then dawned on me that really, we all are writing our gospel - our story - a chapter a day by the deeds that we do, words that we say. Others – home, work and elsewhere – will read what we write, determine whether it’s faithful and true; what’s the gospel, what’s the story, according to us?

Let’s take some inventory. What does our story look like right now? Is it one that honors us, nurtures those dependent upon us and adds value to the communities we serve? If the answer is yes, great; if not, what are we doing to make sure the next chapter embraces that honor, nurture and add value script?

Life is full of unexpected and unwanted twists and turns. We all know that, right? What is the great unknown is how will we react when the storms of life threaten to batter our bodies, brains or bank accounts.

A Sunday morning glance at Facebook and seeing pictures of my daughter takes me back to a backpack story that inspired my first book Kids Teach the Darndest Things: Life Lessons from Our Little Ones.

Ladies and gentlemen, we are writing our gospel – our story – a chapter a day. It boils down to a few basic things. Life is simple, not easy. The deeds we do and the words we say, let’s make sure they’re good ones, okay?