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PRAYER FOR THE WEEK
Jesus, help me step back from arguments to decide whether they're really worth having! Amen.

Jesus heard the Apostles arguing. "What are you fighting about?" He asked. They were ashamed, because they'd been arguing over which one of them was the greatest. Jesus told them, "If any of you wants to be first, he has to be a servant to all."

"What on earth are you fighting about?" an adult asks, frustrated with you and your brother, sister, classmate or friend.

The two of you probably have a long and detailed explanation for why you're yelling, name-calling or even physically fighting. You both talk at once, trying to out-shout each other: "He said I was stupid!" "Because she won't let me have the iPad!" "It's my turn!"

You sound a lot like the Apostles in this week's Gospel (Mark 9:30-37)! The Apostles were Jesus' closest friends and followers, the ones was Jesus teaching to carry on His work after He went back to heaven. Since they'd been specially chosen for that job, they probably thought they were pretty important. In fact, they started wondering which one of them was the most important -- who would be the leader; who would get to go straight to heaven.

No matter how emotional an argument between two kids gets, if you stop for a minute and really think about it, it probably isn't as important as you first thought. It's annoying when someone is hogging the iPad, but is it something worth screaming and hitting over? You might even find out you were wrong and the other person really needed to finish something on the iPad.

To Jesus, even the importance of the Apostles wasn't worth fighting over. All of them were equally important to Him - and worrying about being the greatest was the opposite of what He was teaching them! Jesus wanted them to help other people, not themselves.

Kids argue because you feel your point of view is important and needs to be heard. But, for all the times that's true, there are times when you need to stop your argument, because it isn't important at all![[In-content Ad]]

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