A Great Birthday Gift

Ah, Birthdays! The one day of the year we get to celebrate ourselves.  Nothing wrong with that.  We were made by the Hands of Master!  Walking miracles, and when you’re a kid, you may even get a BIG party! Invite your friends! Cake! Candles! Ice cream! Presents!  Love those presents, but what would happen if instead of all of those nice $15 – $20 Target jobbers, you bundled that mini-mountain of gifts into one present?  That would probably be worth several hundred dollars, wouldn’t it?  That’s a lot of money… 

Austin's Great Birthday Gift

…especially if you’re 11, like Austin Gates, who just had his party and raised $505.  Are you kidding me??  For $505 a boy could buy an Xbox 360; not just the normal kind. He could get an Xbox 360 Limited Edition Kinect Star Wars bundle, custom-designed with R2-D2, C-3PO, and have money left over for his own light saber.  If you’re out of the Jedi stage, for $505 you could buy a new iPad. Did you get that? A new iPad; the epitome of cool; the world at your 11-year-old finger tips!

Or, for $505, you could provide care for a child who needs it. You could provide food, shelter, medicine, education, the care of a house momma to a child who was, not too long ago, fending for themselves, AND you could provide all of that for ONE YEAR, but really?  How could one expect a person to give up their birthday presents for someone they never met? What 11 year old would do that? Austin Gates not only would, he did, which is the greatest proof that he would.

 Austin, what a great birthday gift!  On behalf of the child you don’t know yet and may not meet until heaven, and from us “grown ups” who are watching, thank you! Happy Birthday, my friend! May God help me be more like you!