Hello, Gracians! It was hard to cancel church last Sunday! I really missed seeing everyone. My little home worship service couldn’t hold a candle to Karen Sawyer and the worship team! Your safety is our priority, so if a snow or ice storm is forecast before, during or after Foundations or worship, we are more likely to cancel. If we can make our space safe for you to be at, and you can get there safely, we want to have church. Thus, we once met this year with no power!
The Town Hall meeting will be THIS Sunday at 9:15am, and Foundations classes will be available as always for nursery through senior high. My sermon on Philippians 2:5-8 was all ready to go, but you’ll hear it on the 22nd instead. It is titled He Humbled Himself, and I’ve been meditating on this theme all week. Jesus downgraded himself considerably to be our Savior. He was God the Son from all eternity, and was the One through whom the world was made (John 1:1-18). He became a real human being in the womb of the Virgin Mary. Conceived as no other in history, the Holy Spirit caused the eternal Son to become Jesus, son of Mary, legal son of Joseph. He went from being worshipped to being helpless and needy. All this He did for our salvation and in perfect obedience to His Father in heaven.
When Paul talks about this in Philippians 2:1-11, he is urging us to live in self-denying ways also. We will cover some more about this on the 22nd, God willing. For now I want to invite you to consider ways to live in this model with your Christmas consumption. Those of us who have financial means spend a great deal in gift-giving to our family members and friends. Some of us use credit cards to spend beyond that means for Christmas gifts (i.e. we carry Christmas debt well into the New Year). I’m not trying to make you feel bad or guilty about buying gifts for one another. I’m not suggesting that you completely abandon purchasing gifts. But what if, in honor of the one who gave His life for us, we scaled back or reshaped some of our consumption? What if we modeled His self-giving ways in this matter?
What if we reduced our consumption-based giving a little bit? What if we knocked $50 or $100 or more off of the budget for Christmas to make a difference? It might be that for some of the adult-to-adult gifts, we all agree to support a charity for the poor. There are some places where this money could meet a necessity instead of a want. Instead of sending $35 to your brother who has everything, why not buy five ducks in his honor? This gift will provide duck eggs year round for a family, and perhaps generate some income for medicines. Thirty-five dollars will help to ship $350 worth of medicines. There are other agricultural “gifts”, projects for exploited children, and clean water projects. Imagine if 100, or a 1000, or a million of us all joined to do the same kinds of things? Would not many of the world’s poor experience an amazing Christmas? Not for guilt’s sake….not because we must, but because He surrendered himself for us.
For more helpful Christmas ideas, browse World Vision’s Christmas Catalogue.
You may have charitable causes that you feel more passionate about than what I’m mentioning. I’m just prompting the thinking that we might be able to shape our spending a little bit to make a huge difference, following Jesus’ example to serve others in His name.
What about the rest of the year? Should we think about this only once a year? There are hands-on opportunities with our local chapter of Love INC, with the Pregnancy Centers of Central VA, and with the Abundant Life Center. You may have more time to give than money. For those of you who would like to continue this financial generosity to the poor by helping a poor child in a third world country, there are two child “sponsorship” opportunities I’ll mention. Through this program you become pen pals with a child in another part of the world, and help provide many of the things their parents can’t afford to provide.
At the Mission to the World (our denominational mission agency) conference this fall, I was blessed to hear a first-hand account of a young woman who was raised in an orphanage sponsored by this ministry. A huge difference was made in her life through these regular contributions to her well-being. Many of her peers became followers of Christ through the loving witness there.
Many in our church are familiar with this Christian ministry and their child sponsorship program. Their program is much larger than our MTW program, and has children from many countries available to be sponsored. Compassion allowed their program to be studied by a researcher to see what impact child sponsorship had over time on key life outcomes. The results were wonderful! Child sponsorship makes a huge difference in the future of these children. It costs less than a decent dinner out with a spouse or friend.
Thanks for taking some time to read this and think it over. I pray that over time many followers of Jesus will began to set aside some of their funds that would have gone to presents that will be soon forgotten, to give to friends around the world who will not soon forget the opportunities they have received through these gifts!
In Him,
Don