With Christmas now behind us, it is easy to forget the spirit of the season as easily as we dismiss the debate between Merry Christmas versus Happy Holidays. Having just left this time of “holiday spirit” I have to wonder in earnest on the true giving aspect. I know there are those who truly give of their time, whether at a soup kitchen, charity project, or other form of service. I also know there are those who have no time, but instead give in a gift of some sort. This covers the angel trees, bonus donations in the offering for a couple weeks, ect. But why are we so intent on this concept of “give a penny, take a penny”? To be more clear, why do so many today (including myself at times) have an ingrained mentality that if I give of my time or gifts, then I should GET something too. Why can’t we be trained to just GIVE without any attachments?
Since I’m on the topic and have already riddled myself into using popular phrasing, I have also heard that when your hand is open in giving it is thus open also to receive. Now this isn’t so bad. Some people close themselves off and think that every fool should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps. Reality, everyone needs help at some time or another.
I have been reading 1 John this week and my thoughts culminated on this subject once I read the following verses:
“This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for one another. 17
If any one of you has material possessions and sees a brother or sister
in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in you? 18 Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.” (1 John 16-18)
Despite the hard workers at the ACLU, Christmas is still a national holiday and it is still (ultimately) about the coming of Jesus Christ to save the world. Yet in all of the mubo-jumbo of “Happy Holidays” being the politically correct phrase to say, how can we possibly miss that JESUS CHRIST LAID DOWN HIS LIFE FOR US. John tells us that “this is how we know what love is.” Not lust the fills the soul at the shot of the most recent Victoria’s Secret model or the the condemnation of a man standing just of the exit of a highway with a sign saying that he is hungry and God bless. Love, in it’s truest and untarnished form is sacrificial. Now, how many can say that they would die for that man off of the highway? No? Jesus did.
Just like that. Thats all there is to it and yet, that all there is to it. It is by far the hardest task that anyone has ever asked of us. To love in a sacrificial manner that people will know who we are by our actions. But why is it so difficult for us to do this? Why is it so hard to simply love one another as Christ first loved us?
