When A Sticker Was Enough

I got a call from our youngest daughter the other day and in the course of the conversation she told me that her oldest son, Atticus, had received a special sticker from his teacher because he had been good all week. No doubt an indication that such was not ALWAYS the case.

I couldn't help but think about how much simpler life used to be when getting a sticker was a big deal. A STICKER!!!! What do you do with it? You take it home and show your parents and maybe they post it on the fridge or stick it on the wall in your room and it's over.

But then I realize that it doesn't even take a sticker to make most of us adults happy. All it takes is a kind word, a compliment, an affirmation, an "at-a-boy." Long after the sticker has lost it's "sticky" that compliment will still warm your heart. As I was leaving La Junta on our last Sunday there as Interim Pastor way back in May of this year, one of the members said, "Man, I hate that you won't be back. I feel like I'm losing a pastor that I've known for a hundred years."

That thought lodged in my heart. It was delivered with warmth and sincerity. It was real. It was a "sticker." The kind that comes your way during the course of life, but not nearly often enough.

It's not one that I can show my grandson, but perhaps it's the kind that I can share wtih him and show him how to give to others. We all need them.

Give someone a "Sticker" today.