Our older two daughters love to read. They’ll wake up early in the morning and disappear into a book. The routine at our house is the girls have free time till about 8:00 AM, and then we’ll have them start in on their school work. Our eleven year old said day-lights saving time is great. Her body still wakes up on the old time, or about 6:15 AM now, and she has an hour more to read in the morning.
Our girls have read a number of books with a historical setting, back in the medieval ages, or a little more recent. They read about princesses and rich people who have large estates and servants. This weekend one of them said wistfully it would be fun to have servants. I thought for a minute and explained that we do have servants.
We a servant who washes our clothes, and we have another servant who dries them.
We have servants who heat our food, and we have servants who keep our food cold.
We have a servant who washes many of our dishes. This is one place where our daughters do some work. They help this servant by loading and unloading.
We have servants who entertain us, some entertain us with music; we have other servants entertain us with moving pictures.
We a servant who heats the house in the winter and a servant who keeps part of the house cool in the summer.
We have a servant, who rarely gets used, who mends clothes.
We have several servants who provide us with access to most of the information in the world. These servants also keep track of our money and provide hours of amusement with various games.
We have a servant who helps clean the floors.
By now I’m sure you have recognized that these “servants” are the appliances that make our life so much easier and fuller.
There are times when I wish we had more money. We are fairly typically middle class Americans. We have sufficient for our needs. But I still think it would be fun to have more money. I have a few friends who have twice as much money as us, and a couple who ten times as much money as we have.
But then I’ll stop and remember just how blessed we are compared to the rest of the world, and compared to people through out most of history. My guess is many kings before the 1800s would trade places in a heart beat. Many of them didn’t have the good food we have. They didn’t have the safety we have. They didn’t have the access to medical technology or the ability to travel that we take for granted.
And some kings may not have had as many servants as we have.
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Technorati tags: wealth, blessings, servants
5 comments:
You are so right. Here at our house we also have a bread machine. That can make you feel like royalty!
What a great post! My seven year old was grumbling about having to help clean the tub. We spent some time reviewing things to be thankful for. One was that we even HAVE a tub. So many people around the world, even today, don't have a bathtub. Thanks for reminding me for the many blessings we take for granted :)
Kathy D.
Thanks for the positive feedback.
I enjoyed writing this post. It was fun to think of all the different "servants" working for us.
Much like fatcatpaulanne, I feel like I'm living in luxury with an ice cream maker...
Thanks for participating in the Carnival of Family Life. This post was a great addition and I appreciate your support!
On Monday, November 19, 2007, the Carnival returns home to Hawaii with Kailani as our host! You can submit your entry until midnight (Pacific time) on Saturday, November 17, 2007, at Colloquium.
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