Christmas Eve

So here we are, finally, at Christmas itself. The big event.

For my family, there is no frantic gift unwrapping this morning. In fact this morning, the girls are at Blue Waters Farm feeding horses, and my son just woke up about nine.

Our main Christmas activity was last night.  We gathered around the dining room table, turned down the lights, and lit some candles.  I turned on Christmas music.  Those who wanted made tea and hot chocolate (I had some yummy Chai tea).  The wife brought out five copies of the Joy to the World Christmas catalog.  I prayed, thanking God for His provision for the year and asking that He guide our decisions that evening so that we would choose what was on His heart.  My son then prayed in a similar vein, and the wife concluded.

I have been praying about how much to give this year through the catalog and had arrived at a figure last week, so at this point I told the family how much money each would have to give. Last week I had asked the kids to consider contributing some of their own money if they wanted, and so at this point last night I invited them to add in that amount if they so chose.  Calculators appeared on the table, and then we all got quiet as we read through the catalog and decided how to give our money.  As we made our decisions, we tallied our choices on our individual worksheets.

As I skimmed through the catalog, I looked for items that tugged at my heart.  I also looked for what seemed to be good "values" - ways to give money so that it did the maximum good.  I had initially thought that I would give more money locally this year, because of the economy. I did give a good chunk locally, though a lot of that was for what I might call "ministry advancement" and not directly to support the poor.  However, I also found myself drawn to give to works overseas, where I know that things are bad no matter what the economy is like.  Orphans in Cambodia always have a rough time of it, whether the credit markets in the US are in disarray or not.

I mentioned above that we had five worksheets, even though there are four people in our family. A friend had given us some money, asking us to decide where the money would go. After we had been working on our own sheets for a while, I suggested to the family an idea for a large chunk of our friend's money.  Everyone else agreed that my suggestion would fit with that person's desires and heart, someone suggested a similar item for the rest of the money, and so that is how we filled out their worksheet.

After we had finished, we consolidated our worksheets.  I then prayed a blessing prayer over our choices - that our money would not only physically bless people, but also spiritually bless them so that they were drawn to God and praised and glorified Him.

And then we were done, our pleasant labor complete. The whole process took about one and a half hours.

Merry Christmas to you, and to all the people that we contributed to.