Can I really take a post from a Video of my Dog Barking to a discussion on God giving to you judging by what you give to others? We shall see!
I’ve owned a YouTube account since Dec. of 2006. I’ve put a number of videos on it since then…41 to be exact. Most of which consists of crappy live records of bands I’ve seen in concert and an array of video packages made for my Video I and Video II classes at Drury. A few short months after starting the account I posted a video of Jack Russell Terrier named Jackson. The video is 8 seconds in its entirety and shows my dog “singing” happy birthday while sitting on the lap of my step-grandpa. I still to this day get comments from both extremes. I get haters calling me an idiot for calling his barking singing and I get dog lovers telling me how he’s adorable.
Somewhere along the line I managed to find a good video to make it a response too and I now get over 5,000 hits a day on that video. If you’ve ever been on YouTube you’d see that two things are always popular: Sex and Animal…can only imagine the kind of YouTube fame Animal Sex would get you! Jokes…though I bet you could find that on YouTube. It was never my intention when posting this little clip of my dog for it to become so popular. I was just wanting to document our dog singing as the Happy Birthday song is his favorite.
Whether you post videos for your own enjoyment or the enjoyment of other’s you still want them to be seen. If you didn’t want them seen you’d leave them on your hard drive. So I was more than thrilled when I realized my video was approaching 500k views and Google contacted my email saying, “Hey, yo, we want to use you to make money and will even give you a little for helping us.” This Ad program Google runs is called GoogleAdsense and it allows you to post ads on your website, blog, or if you are lucky enough your YouTube videos.
At the time I didn’t think much of it. I agreed to the terms and they emailed me some registration stuff I didn’t bother filling out. Several months later I remembered about it and decided to log in and see if anything had happened. Low and behold I had over 100 bucks sitting in my account! I was shocked as I didn’t think this was actually going to be something that could make me money. Needless to say I immediately went through the necessary steps to have the check get mailed to me. I’ve had it setup since October of ’09 and I’m not bringing in ridiculous amounts of money or anything, but it’s usually enough to cover my auto insurance!
Rafe Quit Talking and SHOW ME THE VIDEO!!!
Now after watching that you’ll notice I’ve decided to start donating the money made off that video to a local Animal Shelter. I never expected to be making this money and after a chat with a friend one night she had mentioned donating the money and I thought it was a brilliant idea. The money has helped me the last few months, but I’m not making enough for it to be a huge impact on my income, so why not give it to someone in need. After an unlikely run in at a local event I met some people who had just started up an Autumn Winds Animal Rescue & Sanctuary that was taking in dogs and cats off of “Death Row” from local area Kill Shelters. This month is going to be my first month donating my check and I’ve chosen them.
After talking with my sister on Skype last about how I was donating I decided I would do a blog about the video and the nature of giving. In the Bible there are many parables and verses about giving.
Luke 6:38 “Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you.”
I mentioned in my first post that I believe the main thing Jesus came here for was to show us Love! And what better way to do so then to give to those in need. The Bible says to give a tithe to the church. I did this for awhile, but I’ve been traveling so much the last few years that I’ve been giving in a different way. On Valentine’s Day a few years ago I started donating to an organization called Christian Foundation for Children & Aging.
This post isn’t meant to be a way for me to brag about the things I’m doing, but to encourage others to do the same. As previously mentioned I believe that if you give, God will give to you in return. This isn’t just a Christian belief…some people may know of this ideal as Karma! Whatever you wanna call it I think only good things can come from donating your time, money, ideas, etc to a cause you care about.
And I’ll finish this ridiculously long post with a thought given to my sister by her pastor. “If your cup is already full then God has nowhere to put more…so give and there’s room to receive, and God might actually see that you have out grown your cup and need a new, bigger cup.” Our God is a Giving God. Give and you shall receive.
Please, comment, elaborate, argue…this doesn’t have to end here…though it probably should, I apologize for such a long post. When I write I ramble!
Exclaim: You're Alive! 