What am I supposed to do for Christmas? Should I buy my wife and children presents? Should I remember the vast majority of the world lives on under $2 per day and, therefore, give money away instead of buying presents for my family? Should I save up and do both? The stories which will be shared and published will be the ones where a family foregoes Christmas presents in order to help a third world family. Is this what I ought to do?
Surely, as a follower of Jesus, my way of life is to be marked by sacrifice and suffering for my fellow men & women. I wonder, though, if during this time of year it’s appropriate for me to withhold giving gifts to my wife, children, and family in order to give gifts to other families.
So often these thoughts spawn, not from a sense of compassion for the poor or a genuine desire to demonstrate the love of Christ as a family, but from a personal sense of guilt for not having compassion for the poor or not loving like Christ. In response to that, I confess, so much of what I do is demand that my family pay the consequence for my sin.
And so this is what God has been teaching me.
Our God is a God who lavishes His love upon us (1 John 3:1). He gives us great and abundant gifts (Matthew 7:11, John 10:10). So often when we are given pictures of Heaven, we are given an image of an abundant feast – not a lackluster meal of rice and beans (Matthew 22). We have a God who is promising to give us His Kingdom and His righteousness – and get this – all the things we worry about which are worth anything will be thrown in (Matthew 6). This is a God who has given us all of creation to steward over.
Yes, we are called to lay down our lives for our friends (John 15). Yes, we are called to daily take up our cross (Luke 9). Yes, we are called to participate in the sufferings of Christ (Romans 8:17, 1 Peter 4).
But all of these calls to sacrifice are calls to sacrifice WITH Christ – as if we already have identified with His sacrifice for us and we are now partnering with Him in the world. It’s a sacrifice as a adopted sons and daughters who willingly choose to move with Him in this world. This is vital. God has come to us and laid down His life for us before we have done anything. He moved first (Romans 5:8).
The process which every Christian is to know intimately and to live out is this: Christ moved toward us first, then we move toward others as we live in the strength of Christ’s love.
Here’s the problem: so often I don’t do a great job communicating to my family that Christ loves them first. In my own sinful struggles to remember Christ’s love, I end up trying to get my family to love others like Christ has loved them… but haven’t helped them to know how Christ has loved them. WHAT?!
And so this year, I’m remembering that my first place of ministry are to those closest to me. How can I love strangers well if I don’t love my wife well? How can we serve a third world country well we don’t serve each other well? How can I communicate the love and abundance of Christ if I don’t know the love and abundance of Christ? So I want to give them abundant gifts to remind them of how much God desires to abundantly give all of us gifts.
I have been thinking about how my first place of ministry and love is my family. I hope that I never implicitly or accidentally communicate to them that God’s blessings, while for others, are not for them – that the love and provision of a father and husband are for the world, but not for his family.
Giving up our presents and purchasing a goat for a family in a third-world country is tempting for me every year. It makes the struggle with envy, gluttony, and over indulgence easy to conquer. I imagine I will consider this every Christmas season for the rest of my life – and one of these Christmases, I should actually do it. Yet this sort of struggle should be so much bigger than just a season. How much better would it be for the world and for God’s Kingdom if daily I lavished love and gifts on my family and, with them, lavished love and gifts on the world – all the while personally sacrificing to help these things happen?
What do you think? What are you doing this year for Christmas and how it is communicating the love Christ to those around you?
