“Ruth Bell Graham 1920–2007 Growing up, Ruth Bell was taught that ministry was a family thing. Her parents were missionaries in China, and Ruth spent most of her childhood there. Planning on missions service herself, she attended Wheaton College—where she met a young preacher named Billy Graham. She married him. Instead of becoming a traditional missionary, as she had planned, Ruth found herself the wife of a pastor. After a few years, she was the wife of one of the country’s most prominent evangelists. Billy’s ministry took him all over the country for weeks at a time. It didn’t make sense for them to take their growing family on the road. Ruth chose to support her husband’s ministry by staying home to care for their family. When her five children were young, caring for them in their North Carolina home was a full-time job. As they grew, Ruth began writing books of poetry and reflections about the things that her chosen path had taught her, and this became her ministry. It wasn’t the ministry she had imagined when she was young, but it’s the ministry that her choices led her to. In her book It’s My Turn, she wrote about something she learned as she was raising her children: “Never let a single day pass without saying an encouraging word to each child. Particularly wherever you have noticed any—even the slightest—improvement on some weak point. Some point at which you have been picking and criticizing. And never fail to pass on any nice thing you have heard said about [the child] to that child.” That’s important advice for parents or anyone who cares for children, but it can certainly apply to others besides children, can’t it? We hear so many negative things each day about ourselves. And, being harsh self-critics, we probably think even more negative things about ourselves than we hear. Why not make this a priority—finding genuine reasons to tell other people what they’re doing well, giving them something positive to dwell on? Children and adults alike need encouragement. To whom can you give a genuine encouraging word today? Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works. HEBREWS 10:24” – Tammy
The Gift of Good Words
