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From the Pastor: Let’s Remember Who Is the Gift

It has been over a month since the first signs of the Christmas Season Buying Sprees have encroached on the shelves of department stores. Some vendors ‘jumped the gun’ by starting out with last year’s leftovers before the good stuff was set out. Get ready: It Is Coming!

Let’s make a suggestion for adding to your Christmas gift buying gifts this year. “ Oh No!! What am I saying”. That’s all we need one more name on the list to confuse and contort out gift giving spirits, like we need another ‘perfect gift ‘ to shop for. And that exposes one of our issues in shopping for Christmas: we struggle to buy gifts. What? How can caring and giving be such a strain? Let us examine our reasons for the gifts: perfect selections; perfect fashions; perfect sizes; perfect pre- subscribed lists? Maybe this is what causes the pressure of shopping and gift giving: we should re-aquaint ourselves with the model of why we share gifts. Should we be trying to impress or be perfect? Or rather should we be giving out of love and appreciation? After all, what are we trying to model?

Here’s an idea that may put things back in perspective; let’s go up one more step of gift giving. How a’bout when we grab a Christmas patterned sweater or ear-muffs that play Jingle Bells we set aside the same amount of money we spend on the un-needed gift as a gift for those in need? Rather than struggle with spending on redundant gifts we share as much with our special offerings? Match the amounts of the gifts we struggle to share with the same amount to charities and offerings who struggle to make the season of Christmas holy? The suggestion here is that for the Holy-Days of Christmas we struggle with choices and perfection when it’s the Spirit of the Christmas gift that needs to be shared. And what better way to share and regain that spirit than to spread the gift giving and to do so where you may never have gone before.

Christmas is not our birthday, or even others; its Christ’s, and every year we struggle with choices and guilt if we are doing the right thing. Let’s try a new thing: a new offering, a new agency, and new mission need, a new community food or clothing bank: these will be a ‘tough choice’ that will be fun to make. A tough choice in a good way!

God Bless.

Ken Wonderland

About Rev. Ken Wonderland

Rev. Ken Wonderland’s spiritual life has deep roots in the Presbyterian Church and our area. His Welsh paternal grandparents were members of the Girard Avenue Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia and eventual members of the Ardmore Presbyterian Church. His parents joined Neshaminy Warwick Presbyterian Church in Hartsville, Warminster, Pa., in the early 1950’s, where Ken was baptized, educated and acclimated to a very positive church, church school and youth-music program. He attended Hatboro Horsham Senior High; obtained his B.A. in Secondary Education- Social Sciences, from Muhlenberg College; and graduated from Princeton Th eological Seminary with a Masters of Divinity in 1983.

His first call as a Minister of the Word and Sacrament was to the Community Chapel of West Glens Falls, Glens Falls New York, a three quarter time Stated Supply position, serving from 1983 to 1991. Ken’s second call was to the Webb Horton Memorial Presbyterian Church of Middletown, New York, as Co-pastor with his wife, serving from 1991 until 2007. He then turned to Interim Ministry work serving the Beacon Presbyterian Church, Beacon N.Y., from 2007 until February of 2010. His most recent position was serving as a yoked Interim position for the Marlboro and Highland Presbyterian Churches, Marlboro, N.Y.

Ken’s wife, Rev. Susan Faye Wonderland, have known each other since Church School and Youth Group days at Neshaminy Warwick. Th ey married after she graduated from Muhlenberg and both entered Princeton Seminary together in 1978. Susan currently serves as the Associate Executive for The Synod of the Trinity.

They have three grown children; Kyra, Ryan and Jayme.

A Message From Rev. Ken Wonderland - November 2011

The changing color of the leaves and the growing chill during our walks tell us that another beautiful Fall season is upon us. And that means we are quickly approaching the Holy-days of Winter, Advent and Christmas. I often refer to the seasons as markers for our life passages. And this year I am expecting a glorious Christmas, again, but in a new setting with new people to listening to the old, old story.

You’ve been praying all along the way and trust with the excitement of a dawning Christmas morn. I look forward to being with you and beginning, together, the next phase of our journey with walks and leaps and tripping along the path that God’s leads us through.

God bless, yours in Christ.

Ken Wonderland