Santa Claus is coming to town (and cleaning out my wallet)
(A Discussion taken from “Advent Conspiracy” by Rick McKinley, Chris Seay and Greg Holder)
So ask yourself, what do you want your Christmas experience to be? Do you want it to be a fun-filled time with friends? Do you want to be smothered in sparkly gifts that lose their luster in just a few days? Or would you like to experience something that will create a memory that will last for years and let your entire Christmas season be a worship experience?
So how do we go about realizing this in our lives, how do we move from the point of where we are ruled by commercialism and to a point where we are empowered to simply experience Christmas? Here is the first thing you need to do, assess why you give gifts at Christmas time. Is it out of a sense of obligation, a feeling of love, or a combination of the two? How do you place a value on the amount of love conveyed in a gift? Is it how much you spend, how big the gift is, how many you purchase?
If we define the value of love conveyed in a gift as any of these things, then it will never be enough. We search and search to find the perfect gift so that we can express our love; the only problem is true love cannot be the driving force of our gift giving if money is. So get this, when we refuse to give in to the commercial version of Christmas and seek to truly give out of love, we break the chains that bind us and weigh us down during Christmas.
I know, I know, crazy right, right now you are sitting a your computer or on your fancy cool device that does everything but cook dinner, pay the bills and get you dressed going this guy is off his rocker. How in the world am I supposed to get gifts for people without using money? I will answer your question with a question, what are you gonna buy the person who has everything anyway? The truth is that most of us purchase what we want/need when we want/need it, so most of us need very little. On the other hand, most of us can fill a book with our wants.
Let me ask you another question, think back over time and your life about the gifts that you have received, which ones come to mind first. The very expensive and extravagant gifts you have received, or the ones that might not have cost much at all but were very personal and extremely filled with love. If you have kids and are anything like me, either your office or your fridge are covered with colorful “prints” made by your kids over the years. Honestly, there are very few things that I got for Christmas last year that I can even remember let alone even know where they are, but those pictures on my wall in my office, are some of the best gifts ever.
We will talk more about that topic in a later post, just keep this in mind, either money or love will RULE our gift-giving, but not both. Right now I want us to take an alternate path, the path of your personal time and presence in others life. Each of us has specific things that we are good at, talents that we were given by God that have been cultivated over time. We have love that has been planted in our hearts by Christ. So maybe this year we could dedicate a little more time to others. Oh, I know, you are a very busy person, your schedule is packed, you have to run here, dash there, etc. etc. etc… Really, are you really so busy that your fellow person means so little to you. Here is an interesting statistic for you from the book “Advent Conspiracy” the total amount of money spent here in America during Christmas is close to 45 times the amount that it would take to bring clean drinking water to the ENTIRE WORLD….wait, you mean you did not know that there were people in the world without clean drinking water. When was the last time you lifted your head from your computer are smart phone and took a look around…
Think on this and I will be back to you in a few days, until then, what can you do today that will make a difference for the Kingdom of God….
I know what I want to say, but will have to come back later.
Posted by: Gladys Premo | 09/01/2010 at 12:33 AM