The offer

I offered a certain person in my family $50 if she could be kind for exactly a week. Three of us were in the car and it was 8:57 p.m. She lost the wager at 8:58 p.m.

But it's Christmas so I said she can start again, as many times as it takes. The sole requirement is that it be one consecutive week of minutes-oh, and I get to be the judge of what is "kind." (One can't be too careful when one lives with a lawyer.)

This is probably exactly the wrong thing for me to do. But these are desperate times. (In other words, it's like the bailout.) There are undoubtedly verses in the Bible you can show me that promise that you can't buy virtue, and you shouldn't try.

It's been 22 hours and I'm enjoying the new family dynamics. It occurs to me also that this is a win-win situation-for me. If this certain person (whom I love desperately) pulls it off, I will be happy to fork over the five big ones; people go to the Bahamas for peace like this.

More importantly, my hunch is that the contestant herself will, in the course of the remaining six days, be impressed by at least two things:

(1) She will learn the difficulty of an endeavor that she likely supposed would be a cake walk, something she could do "any time I want," if she ever wanted. But "everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin" (John 8:34) and without the Spirit's help we cannot to do things we want to (Romans 7:15).

(2) She will (please, Lord!) notice the desirability of kindness, and consider that it might be something that she'd like to keep.