The habits of charity are about priority

My daughter taught me an important lesson on the habit of charity on our last trip to Olive Garden. I ordered Eggplant Parmesan. One of the things I love is that I can eat a lot of salad, throw in a couple breadsticks and by the time the food comes I only need to eat half of it, then I can save the other half and have a delicious lunch the next day.

When I go to Olive Garden, my priority is, eat some tonight, save some for tomorrow. Two meals for me. It works out perfectly…for me!

We walked out of Olive Garden, with my extra food in hand. Tomorrow was going to be a delicious lunch and dinner was fantastic. Everything was going so well!

Then my daughter saw a woman holding a sign on the corner asking for food.

My daughter has different priorities than I do.

Her priority was NOT my lunch tomorrow. Her priority was driven by charity towards that woman.

With the speed of charity that you would expect from a young child, she recommended that I give my much-anticipated lunch away.

I don’t remember what I had for lunch the next day. I do know it was not left-over Eggplant Parmesan!

Charity is priority.

We all want to be charitable. We all want to give and contribute to others.

When we don’t, I have found it is because we don’t make it a priority. We are busy, we have all our own things to spend our money on, we have something planned the day of the service project.

It’s not that we don’t want to, we do. It’s just not always convenient. It isn’t always a priority.

At Olive Garden, I had priorities—my lunch the next day. My daughter helped me reestablish my priorities.

How do we do that on a consistent basis? I’ve come up with one habit I’m trying out this week.

To prioritize charity…I add it to my to do list!

Now I know that this isn’t totally perfect. Charity isn’t something you can just click off. You don’t check the box and say, “Ok, now I am charitable.”

What it does do is get me thinking and prioritizing. I’m the type of person that likes to click all the things off of my to do list. If I have it on my list, I will be looking for things I can do to reasonably check off that I have done some charitable things.

Gets me looking.

Gets me thinking of what I can do.

Helps me prioritize.

Try it out. Make it an item on your list that you do something charitable every day this week and see how it impacts your mind to start looking for opportunities.

And if you go to Olive Garden, check out the Eggplant Parmesan. It is amazing, even the next day!