It’s About Giving ~ Biblical Giving

When I was a child I used to love Christmas. After all these years I still get that warm mushy feeling inside when I think of Christmas when I was a child. The thing I remember most about Christmas as a child was the excitement of Santa Clause. I would be so happy when the Sears Catalog would arrived at our house. I remember my brother and I would rush to get it and then we would look at it every day for for hours picking out that one special gift. I would then write my letter to Santa and place it in the mailbox with hopes that I had been a good enough little girl that year to not be on the naughty list so that Santa would bring me my special gift.

Sadly not all children in the world have that same sort of privileges I had growing up . I realize now as a grown up Christmas is not all about Santa and toys. There is not a ‘good’ or ‘naughty’ list and many many good little children will not receive anything at all for Christmas.

Last week I had the privilege of going with a group of women from my church to Atlanta Georgia to help process packed shoe boxes for a program through Samaritan’s Purse called Operation Christmas child. Each year thousands of people pack shoe boxes full of Christmas gifts which will go to children around the world who may never have received a gift of their own. When each child receives a shoebox they also get a booklet Called ‘The Greatest Journey’ which is an exciting discipleship program that teaches children to become faithful followers of Jesus, of all the gifts in that box that gift of Jesus IS the biggest gift of all.

I know this was supposed to be a blogger assignment for Compassion and I got to talking about Samaritan’s Purse and Operation Christmas Child but the truth is this story is really not just a blogger assignment sent to me in my email from my Compassion blogger leader, this is an assignment from God. Christmas is not all about Santa and presents. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus Christ, it’s about how God loved us so much he sent us a savior. Jesus was and still is the greatest gift of all.

Jesus was a King who lay in a manger because there was not room for him at the inn and sometimes it seems to me with all the hoopla of Christmas maybe not a whole lot has changed since that night. I sometimes have to ask myself do we have room for Him now?

What I saw last week at Operation Christmas child was proof we do have room for him, I saw hundreds of people working together giving the gift of their time and love to help children in need. I saw people working hard yet they were joyful. They were not caught in the frenzy and stress Christmas shopping for presents instead they were working together packing presents for children in the presence of Jesus.

There are children in the world who not only do not have Christmas presents they also do not have the basic necessities such as food, medical care and safe drinking water. Compassion has for the next 20 days started a Christmas Catalog campaign called ‘It’s About Giving’. You can help children in need by browsing the 2012 Christmas Catalog and help a child who is registered in Compassion’s program who has not been sponsored yet by giving them a gift of many things such as clean water, livestock, medical care, food and most of all the gift of knowing Jesus.

This Christmas make it a season of giving, will you give a child a gift of Christmas Joy this year? You can click the picture of the little girl below to browse the Compassion 2012 Christmas Gift Catalog.