Building Blocks

Liv and her friend Serenity sat down for a snack after school while Liv's little brother Zeke played with his building blocks on the floor."Did you see Rachel's new haircut?" Liv asked her friend as her mom set some cookies on the table. "It looks awful!" "I know!" said Serenity. "She's trying to make her hair look like Bella's, but she can't pull it off. She's always trying to be like Bella. It's so pathetic!""Well, she doesn't want to be like Bella when it comes to math," Liv said. "When Miss Potter handed back our quizzes today, I saw Bella's and she got every answer wrong." Liv giggled. "And that quiz was so easy!"Serenity finished her milk. "Yeah. How can Bella flunk math when we have the dumbest math teacher ever?"Mom frowned and started to say something when a horn sounded outside. "There's my mom," said Serenity. "I gotta go." As she headed for the door, her foot brushed against Zeke's tall block building, knocking it over. "Oops! Sorry," Serenity muttered as she hurried out.Zeke's eyes filled with tears. "Mommy, Serenity knocked my building down!""I know, honey, but it was an accident. Why don't you build it again?" Mom turned to Liv. "I'm afraid Serenity's not the only one who knocked something down. You've just done the same thing.""Me?" asked Liv. "I didn't touch Zeke's blocks or anything else!""I'm talking about the way you girls talked about your classmates and teacher," said Mom, joining Liv at the table. "You certainly weren't building them up, were you?"Liv bit into a cookie. "I guess not.""That block building Zeke made was important to him," said Mom, "but not as important as people are to God. None of us is perfect--we all struggle with different things. But Jesus loves us all so much He died for us! And He builds us up by reminding us of His love and grace and being with us in our struggles. We can do the same for others by building them up with our words--both those we say to them and those we say about them." Liv nodded. "I need to call Serenity. I want to tell her something nice about each person we knocked down today." -Vicki L. Reinhardt