Christmas

An article by Rick Warren with his trademark off-beat humour. See if you can spot some of it below :)

A Purpose Driven Christmas
Getting the most out of Christmas this year
December 07, 2005 - by Rick Warren

A few months ago at Halloween, I made a quick stop at a discount store, where I stumbled onto a stock crew busily pulling candy from the shelves. It was only about 5 o'clock, but it seemed sensible to assume that the trick-or-treat crowd had already bought all the goodies they were going to buy.

But here's what made this such an unforgettable snapshot - as they pulled the Halloween treats from the shelves, they were replacing them with Christmas candy. The corpse of Halloween hadn't even grown cold, and yet the artificial spirit of Christmas - crass commercialism - already inhabited the malls of America.

Every year it seems like the starting date for our panicked dash through the Christmas season gets pushed ever earlier, encouraging us all to work harder and spend more in an effort to make the approaching yuletide the best one ever.

Do you think it will ever slow down? And in the years to come, do you think your family and friends are going to remember the wild-eyed, charge-card march into the shadowy hours of Christmas morn, when the last store closes? Or, will they remember the more important expressions of Christmas, such as God's love for us all and the value of deep, caring relationships?

This has been on my mind ever since my sister found a picture of me as a mop-haired 3-year-old, standing next to a birthday cake for Jesus. The cake was my idea, a burst of preschooler inspiration in response to my mother's explanation that Christmas is the celebration of Jesus' birth. I concluded with a child's logic, "Well then, we should have a party and cake and Kool-Aid and sing happy birthday to him!"

This "birthday party for Jesus," complete with angel food cake, became a family tradition now entering its 47th year. We sing carols and read the Christmas story from the Bible, and then each family member answers two questions: "What from this past year are you thankful to God for?" and "Since it's Jesus' birthday, what gift will you give him this next year?"

Moments like these are far more meaningful and memorable than ones involving the tacky tinsel trinkets that claim to contain the heart of Christmas. Most of us know that the key to the "best Christmas ever" is not buying more or doing more, the problem is - we just don't know how to get off the treadmill. How do you stay focused on the things that are important and get un-focused from the things of little significance?

Purpose-driven holidays
I believe you answer that question by applying a purpose-driven approach to Christmas - balancing your holiday around the five biblical purposes of fellowship, character growth, service, missions and worship. God created you to live with this balance and that's why, when you're out of balance, you begin to feel stress.

Let me put it this way: To maintain your physical health, you need regular check-ups with a doctor who can assess your vital signs - blood pressure, temperature, weight, and so on. For your spiritual health, particularly during the hectic holiday season, you need to check the five vital signs of fellowship, character, service, missions and worship. The ancient writer, Jeremiah, once advised, "Let's take a good look at the way we're living and reorder our lives under God." (Lamentations 3:40, The Message)

The purpose of fellowship
If you're like me, you don't have any problem with fellowship during the Christmas season! In fact, my biggest challenge may be too much fellowship. But I've learned over the years that the greatest gift I can give anyone is my time.

When you give someone your time, you're giving a portion of your life that you'll never get back! The essence of the Christmas spirit is not what we think or do or provide for others, but how much we give of ourselves.

I saw the power of fellowship when our children were younger. I remember they would pass on all sorts of things - a chance to watch more TV or play a little longer - in order to crawl into my wife's lap to read a story. It confused me at first, until I realized that, more than the stories, my children valued the gift of their mother's time. By reading to our children, Kay was saying, "I value you enough to give you my most precious asset - my time."

This Christmas you can give your children or grandchildren the gift of fellowship by purposefully blocking out time to spend with them, making goodies together or reading about Jesus in the manger.

Or you could try having a "Birthday Party for Jesus," like my family does: it's a form of fellowship that helps our family maintain a firm foundation that supports deep and rich relationships.

The purpose of character growth
By character growth, I mean a sense of discipleship - that you're always growing in the values of your faith, and that you're actively teaching those values to others. Christmas is the perfect time to honestly assess if your beliefs are truly influencing your behavior.

One mom recently revealed to me how she taught her children about the meaning of Christmas. When they were young, she would give them each a $20 bill and then walk them through the toy department. Their assignment was to buy toys for the less fortunate, thinking about what others might want and not what they might want for themselves.

She said the process taught her three children to have a generous spirit and to maintain a healthy humility about the many blessings in their own lives. As her children grew older, she worked through her church to identify specific families who wished to be "adopted" during the Christmas season, and she then led her children through this sponsorship process as they provided holiday meals and delivered presents to those in need.

But encouraging character growth can also be as simple as teaching your children about your faith as you decorate for the season. You can explain the Nativity is a picture of the first Christmas, where Jesus was born in a barn. It provides a means for teaching the full Christmas story (Luke 2), from Mary and Joseph's trip to Bethlehem, to the angels announcing the arrival of baby Jesus and the shepherds running to see him, to the arrival of the wise men.

Or, as you decorate the Christmas tree, you can explain that Daddy keeps this beat-up old ornament because he made it when he was six, and it reminds him of a special night with his brothers and sisters. The "Baby's First Christmas" is a reminder of one child's first holiday, when he or she was swaddled just like Jesus (and you can show how a baby is swaddled in cloth).

The purpose of service
Before I say anything about service, let me emphasize that I think far too many families overload their schedules at Christmas. That's why I encourage you to maintain a balance between these five purposes. By measuring everything you do according to how - or whether - it fits among these purposes, you will actually find your holiday schedule more manageable and your season less stressful. By having a strong sense of purpose throughout the Christmas season, you're less likely to be pulled in every direction as people and activities compete for your attention.

When it comes to serving others at Christmas, I want to encourage you to think about the things you're good at, and then give those talents away in service to those around you. By this I mean, if you're good at organizing, then give your organizational skills to some project. If you're good at decorating, then offer that as a service to your local congregation, perhaps decorating the sanctuary. If you're good at cooking, then bring something to my house - Ha!

The point is - you can give far more than money at Christmas, and God wants you to serve with your gifts, not just serve for the sake of service. For instance, you might organize an effort within your community, such as Franklin Graham's Operation Christmas Child, where shoeboxes are filled with items for needy children. Someone else may be more gifted at publicity, so that becomes their service; another person might feel more comfortable simply filling the boxes, and that becomes their service.

Use the gifts that God has given you and don't feel guilty that you can't do EVERYTHING. The Apostle Paul once wrote, "God has given each of us the ability to do certain things well." (Romans 12:6, NLT) Since your natural abilities are from God, he wants you to use them!

Consider this - you are the only person on earth who can use your abilities. No one else can play your role because they don't have the unique shape that God has given you.

The purpose of missions
Being mission-minded means you shift your thinking from "here and now" to the eternal. Thinking eternally will keep you from majoring on the minors and help you distinguish between what's urgent and what's ultimate.

Let me explain with this example. Right now in my office I have a four-foot stack of generic mail - not personal letters - but things like magazines, newsletters, junk mail, and even some packages containing material that I know won't be needed until next month. Every morning that stack whispers to me that the sorting is urgent, but the reality is - it's not urgent. It can wait, while I write this letter to you - because you are more important than sorting that stack.

The point is - don't get so busy doing a thousand things at Christmas that you fail to focus on those things that will last forever. It grieves me that sometimes we're so busy with our own customs and festivities that we forget to share with others why Christmas is so meaningful to us.

One simple way to do this is to have a Christmas Open House. A friend of mine who happens to be a missionary says she's found this to be an excellent way to open discussions of faith, and that it's worked in foreign countries as well as the United Sates.

During her Christmas Open House, Kathy reads the Christmas story, inviting children to sit on the floor around her chair. She explains to everyone what Christmas means to her family, and uses a small Nativity to emphasize portions of the story.

She also leads everyone in singing Christmas carols, using ones that tell the story of God's love and the birth of his Son, Jesus Christ, as a Savior to all mankind. She might include carols such as "Away in a Manger," "Joy to the World," "Hark! The Herald Angels Sing," "O Come, All Ye Faithful," and "What Child Is This?"

The purpose of worship
All that I've said so far serves as a reminder that Christmas is a holiday rooted in a spiritual event. It's so easy to forget that as you're rushing to the store for more wrapping paper or dashing to your child's school play. It's been my experience that even non-church people recognize this, and they, too, wrestle with keeping the spirit of Christmas from sliding into commercial overload. Wasn't that the very struggle Charlie Brown had 40 years ago?

Certainly you should take some time during the holidays when you praise and meditate upon God. Many churches have candle-lighting services as a reminder that Jesus, the Light of the World, was born to chase the darkness out of our lives.

Remember that many of our every day activities can become acts of worship when we do them for the praise, glory, and pleasure of God. The Bible teaches, "So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God." (1 Corinthians 10:31, NIV) The great Reformation leader, Martin Luther, once said, "A dairymaid can milk cows to the glory of God."

How is it possible to turn the everyday tasks of life into an act of worship? By doing them as if you were doing them for God and by carrying on a continual conversation with God while you do them! The Bible says, "Whatever you do, work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord, not for men." (Colossians 3:23, NIV)

This is the secret to a lifestyle of worship - doing everything as if you were doing it for God. The Message, a paraphrase of the Bible, says, "Take your everyday, ordinary life - your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life - and place it before God as an offering." (Romans 12:1, Message)

Work becomes worship when you dedicate it to God and perform it with an awareness of his presence. To help you understand this, I want to tell you about the time when I first fell in love with my wife, Kay. I thought of her constantly: while eating breakfast, driving to school, attending class, waiting in line at the market, pumping gas - I could not stop thinking about this woman!

I often talked to myself about her and thought about all the things I loved about her. This helped me feel close to Kay even though we lived several hundred miles apart and attended different colleges. By constantly thinking of her, I was abiding in her love.

You can worship God in a similar way, thinking and conversing with him constantly as you go about your day, eating breakfast, driving your children to school, attending the office Christmas party, waiting in that long line at the grocery store. By constantly thinking of God, you are abiding in his love. This is what real worship is all about - falling in love with God.

Imagine if you carried this worshipful attitude with you as you stood in a long, Christmas line at the post office. You could transform the entire situation knowing that the cards and packages you were mailing were part of your mission - your purpose - to reflect the love of God. If you saw yourself as an ambassador of God's love, how would you treat the crowds around you differently?

One of the greatest worship times I ever had during the holiday season was simply watching the pure joy of my children on Christmas morning. I was blessed watching them, and I thought of how our heavenly Father must have been pleased, too, with their contagious joy.

And that leads back to my "Birthday Party for Jesus," where we talk about what God is doing in our lives and offer a gift to God each year as a way of remembering he is the reason we celebrate the season.

This moment of reflection helps us stay balanced between the five godly purposes of fellowship, character growth, service, missions and worship.

There was a "Birthday Party for Jesus" about 30 years ago when I shared with my family some words from the Bible that had burned so deeply into my heart they forever altered the direction of my life: "David served God's purpose in his generation.." (Acts 13:36) This Scripture says that the ancient king of Israel, the same one who slew Goliath as a boy, dedicated his life to fulfilling God's purposes on earth.

I believe this is the ultimate definition of a life well lived - doing the eternal and timeless (God's purposes) in a contemporary and timely way (in your generation). That is the aim of a purpose-driven life, and the focus of a purpose-driven Christmas.

It is only in this generation - in this now - that you can create a meaningful and memorable Christmas for yourself and for the multiple-generations of your family. As the ancient wisdom says: for such a time as this, God created you! (Esther 4:14)