A Tale of Two Christmases
Let me tell you what Christmas is like for me.
It usually starts a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, when my church gets involved with the local food drive. We provide Thanksgiving meal bags for the community food bank, and each year I am compelled to give more than the previous year, and usually I don’t mean just adding a few more cans I mean providing another full bag of food beyond the number of bags given the previous year. Of course doing that takes several hours of shopping to purchase each of the required items for each thanksgiving bag, and sometimes it even involves multiple stores because I need to purchases more of an item than the first store has in stock. And then there is the cost of these goods in the amount of hundreds of dollars, along with the suggested dollar donation for the cost of perishable items that will be added by the food bank. And that is just the start of my Holiday season…
Around Thanksgiving time my mom starts pushing for Christmas lists from everyone. It is important to get these done early, so they are ready for when I take the family Christmas shopping. It is also important that the lists are for items easily found in local stores so I don’t have to do a bunch of running around, because my mom and my brother don’t drive, and my sister only just got her license and isn’t ready for running around to unfamiliar places during busy Holiday traffic, so the burden of transportation for the entire Christmas season for my whole family falls on me. Of course Christmas shopping trips mean that I must leave work extra early so there will be sufficient time for shopping after the 60-90 minute trip from my work to my mom’s house. Our first stop is usually a general purpose store where I have to wait around for a couple hours for the others to do their shopping, and then try not to spoil any surprises seeing visible gifts showing through the thin bags most stores provide now days. Then if I am fortunate everyone will have found everything they want to buy, and we can go home instead of moving on to a second store, and perhaps even a third. Then after that is done I have to plan for a separate shopping trip with just my brother and sister so we can buy gifts for my Mom, again leaving work early and spending hours in the stores, and even after that is done I still have to do my own Christmas shopping. Oh, and did I mention that this also has to be coordinated apart from the normal weekly grocery shopping trips I provide for my mom year round? Oh the joys of Christmas shopping when you are the only one who drives…
The Holidays also make an extra busy time at my church. I am a lead member of the church usher and greeter team, which means I am responsible for making sure the church is as comfortable as possible, that everyone has a place to sit, that there are volunteers assigned to take up the offerings, and that everything is closed down when the services are over. When you compound visiting guests, special programs, altered service schedules, volunteers who are on vacation so they are not available, and the fact that many people tend to arrive late, making sure that people’s needs are attended too can easily run a person ragged, and the Holiday season is the worse time for this. My back aches from moving chairs around, I never get to see the entire Christmas program uninterrupted, the building is always too hot because people sitting near the windows like them closed, and the times when I could use the most help are usually the times when all the volunteers are out of town. Oh, and as the icing on the cake I always have to stay and work for both services…
I have a couple of charities I have been donating to for a number of years, and I like to give them both a substantial donation around Christmas time. Although my financial house is in order, I do have some accumulated debt from house improvements and purchasing a vehicle that are not fully paid off yet. With the added costs of food bank and other charity donations, plus generous Christmas gifts for my family, I usually need to cut the payback of my debts to minimum amounts during the holidays, and even after doing that my bank accounts tend to fall well below their normal levels by the end of the year, and I hope I didn’t miscalculate and forget about some important bill…
In summary, giving is expensive. It costs a lot of time and hard work, and quickly sucks the funds away from one’s pocket book. From how I just described what my Holidays are like, most people would arguably say I am crazy. They would say that it isn’t worth the time, trouble, or expense to do everything I do, and in reality what I do isn’t nearly as much as some people. And when you think about it logically, they are right. From a certain point of view, generous giving around the Holidays is just crazy.
But I don’t give because I have to, I give because I am thankful. I have extended family who have had to rely on food banks in the past, and I know there are a lot of people experiencing hard times now. I give to the food bank because I am thankful for what God has given to me… My family is very important to me. I give my time to take them Christmas shopping so that they can enjoy their Holidays without stress, because I am thankful that God has given them to me… I have been attending my church for 42 years and have been volunteering for more than 25 years. They are the church that stood with me during the hardest time of my life when my father died in 2008. I love the people and I am thankful that God has planted me there… The two big charities I donate to are also very special to me, and I like to give to them in honor of my father, who also gave to them. One charity was started from a vision of my church, and I have been giving to them since their very first community fundraiser. The other charity was founded by my father’s best friend and a longstanding friend of the family. I am thankful for the work that both of them do and that God has enabled me to support them on a regular basis…
The way we see Christmas is all a matter of perspective. We can look at it from the side of the amount of work, time, and expense, or we can look at it from the side of love and gratefulness. It’s the same Holiday whether we see it the one way or the other. There is still the same amount of work. The gifts still cost the same amount. Our feet still get sore from walking around the stores and wishing the other people we are with would hurry up so we can go home and relax. When all is said and done, the same presents end up under the tree, which are opened in the same chaotic tearing of wrapping paper that is over in far less time than it took to put everything together. But none of that is what Christmas is about. If we open our eyes to see what God sees, we will have a completely different Christmas.
Christmas can be simply summed up in one thing, one theme. Christmas is what happened when God stepped out of Heaven to dwell with us. Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23). If that does not fill your mind with awe and wonder I don’t know what will. God came to earth to be with us and to show us who He is, what He is like. God is no longer seen like a burning cloud filled with thunder and lightning raining fire down from Heaven to smite His enemies. God is seen like a human being who cares, and loves, and heals, and raises the dead, and the only way we could discover who He really is is because of Christmas.
The Mighty God is Immanuel (Isaiah 9:6). The Great I Am is Jesus the Christ (John 8:58). The Creator of the World is The King of kings and The Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). The Great Judge of the Human Race (2Timothy 4:1) calls us His friends (John 15:13-15) and brothers (Matthew 12:50). Because God came to be with us, He made a way for us to also be with Him, where there was no way before (John 14:6, Hebrews 10:19-22).
My friends, do not get so caught up in your perspective of the season that you miss the greatest miracle that ever happened. God is with us.
James :)
It usually starts a couple of weeks before Thanksgiving, when my church gets involved with the local food drive. We provide Thanksgiving meal bags for the community food bank, and each year I am compelled to give more than the previous year, and usually I don’t mean just adding a few more cans I mean providing another full bag of food beyond the number of bags given the previous year. Of course doing that takes several hours of shopping to purchase each of the required items for each thanksgiving bag, and sometimes it even involves multiple stores because I need to purchases more of an item than the first store has in stock. And then there is the cost of these goods in the amount of hundreds of dollars, along with the suggested dollar donation for the cost of perishable items that will be added by the food bank. And that is just the start of my Holiday season…
Around Thanksgiving time my mom starts pushing for Christmas lists from everyone. It is important to get these done early, so they are ready for when I take the family Christmas shopping. It is also important that the lists are for items easily found in local stores so I don’t have to do a bunch of running around, because my mom and my brother don’t drive, and my sister only just got her license and isn’t ready for running around to unfamiliar places during busy Holiday traffic, so the burden of transportation for the entire Christmas season for my whole family falls on me. Of course Christmas shopping trips mean that I must leave work extra early so there will be sufficient time for shopping after the 60-90 minute trip from my work to my mom’s house. Our first stop is usually a general purpose store where I have to wait around for a couple hours for the others to do their shopping, and then try not to spoil any surprises seeing visible gifts showing through the thin bags most stores provide now days. Then if I am fortunate everyone will have found everything they want to buy, and we can go home instead of moving on to a second store, and perhaps even a third. Then after that is done I have to plan for a separate shopping trip with just my brother and sister so we can buy gifts for my Mom, again leaving work early and spending hours in the stores, and even after that is done I still have to do my own Christmas shopping. Oh, and did I mention that this also has to be coordinated apart from the normal weekly grocery shopping trips I provide for my mom year round? Oh the joys of Christmas shopping when you are the only one who drives…
The Holidays also make an extra busy time at my church. I am a lead member of the church usher and greeter team, which means I am responsible for making sure the church is as comfortable as possible, that everyone has a place to sit, that there are volunteers assigned to take up the offerings, and that everything is closed down when the services are over. When you compound visiting guests, special programs, altered service schedules, volunteers who are on vacation so they are not available, and the fact that many people tend to arrive late, making sure that people’s needs are attended too can easily run a person ragged, and the Holiday season is the worse time for this. My back aches from moving chairs around, I never get to see the entire Christmas program uninterrupted, the building is always too hot because people sitting near the windows like them closed, and the times when I could use the most help are usually the times when all the volunteers are out of town. Oh, and as the icing on the cake I always have to stay and work for both services…
I have a couple of charities I have been donating to for a number of years, and I like to give them both a substantial donation around Christmas time. Although my financial house is in order, I do have some accumulated debt from house improvements and purchasing a vehicle that are not fully paid off yet. With the added costs of food bank and other charity donations, plus generous Christmas gifts for my family, I usually need to cut the payback of my debts to minimum amounts during the holidays, and even after doing that my bank accounts tend to fall well below their normal levels by the end of the year, and I hope I didn’t miscalculate and forget about some important bill…
In summary, giving is expensive. It costs a lot of time and hard work, and quickly sucks the funds away from one’s pocket book. From how I just described what my Holidays are like, most people would arguably say I am crazy. They would say that it isn’t worth the time, trouble, or expense to do everything I do, and in reality what I do isn’t nearly as much as some people. And when you think about it logically, they are right. From a certain point of view, generous giving around the Holidays is just crazy.
But I don’t give because I have to, I give because I am thankful. I have extended family who have had to rely on food banks in the past, and I know there are a lot of people experiencing hard times now. I give to the food bank because I am thankful for what God has given to me… My family is very important to me. I give my time to take them Christmas shopping so that they can enjoy their Holidays without stress, because I am thankful that God has given them to me… I have been attending my church for 42 years and have been volunteering for more than 25 years. They are the church that stood with me during the hardest time of my life when my father died in 2008. I love the people and I am thankful that God has planted me there… The two big charities I donate to are also very special to me, and I like to give to them in honor of my father, who also gave to them. One charity was started from a vision of my church, and I have been giving to them since their very first community fundraiser. The other charity was founded by my father’s best friend and a longstanding friend of the family. I am thankful for the work that both of them do and that God has enabled me to support them on a regular basis…
The way we see Christmas is all a matter of perspective. We can look at it from the side of the amount of work, time, and expense, or we can look at it from the side of love and gratefulness. It’s the same Holiday whether we see it the one way or the other. There is still the same amount of work. The gifts still cost the same amount. Our feet still get sore from walking around the stores and wishing the other people we are with would hurry up so we can go home and relax. When all is said and done, the same presents end up under the tree, which are opened in the same chaotic tearing of wrapping paper that is over in far less time than it took to put everything together. But none of that is what Christmas is about. If we open our eyes to see what God sees, we will have a completely different Christmas.
Christmas can be simply summed up in one thing, one theme. Christmas is what happened when God stepped out of Heaven to dwell with us. Immanuel, God with us (Isaiah 7:14, Matthew 1:23). If that does not fill your mind with awe and wonder I don’t know what will. God came to earth to be with us and to show us who He is, what He is like. God is no longer seen like a burning cloud filled with thunder and lightning raining fire down from Heaven to smite His enemies. God is seen like a human being who cares, and loves, and heals, and raises the dead, and the only way we could discover who He really is is because of Christmas.
The Mighty God is Immanuel (Isaiah 9:6). The Great I Am is Jesus the Christ (John 8:58). The Creator of the World is The King of kings and The Lord of lords (Revelation 19:16). The Great Judge of the Human Race (2Timothy 4:1) calls us His friends (John 15:13-15) and brothers (Matthew 12:50). Because God came to be with us, He made a way for us to also be with Him, where there was no way before (John 14:6, Hebrews 10:19-22).
My friends, do not get so caught up in your perspective of the season that you miss the greatest miracle that ever happened. God is with us.
James :)
posted by AskAboutGod | Monday, December 24, 2012
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