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

