Passionate Homemaking

Sev­eral years ago, my family decided to renew our heart for giving and the true mean­ing of Christ­mas during the hol­i­day season by giving a spe­cial gift to a needy family. There was a family suf­fer­ing in the church at that time with a new­born girl that had sev­eral seri­ous phys­i­cal prob­lems and there­fore, they were suf­fer­ing greatly. We decided we wanted to give a phys­i­cal out­pour­ing of bless­ing upon this family. We went out together and picked out Christ­mas gifts for each of the other sev­eral chil­dren and sur­prised them with these gifts on Christ­mas Eve. It was such a won­der­ful time together to serve this family with the love of Christ and the body. From then on our fam­i­lies became very close friends. I trea­sure this expe­ri­ence as one of our most pur­pose­ful and mean­ing­ful Christ­mas tra­di­tions grow­ing up. We received the true joy of giving!

How can we trea­sure the gift of Jesus’ coming this Christ­mas? Con­sider giving a gift to Jesus in a sim­i­lar way, espe­cially as Christ­mas is the cel­e­bra­tion of Jesus’ birth­day. Noel Piper says in her book, Trea­sur­ing God in Our Tra­di­tions, “One of the unusual things about Jesus is that when we give a gift to him, other people benefit.” Con­sider how you can refo­cus on the true mean­ing of Christ­mas by set­ting aside some of your bud­geted Christ­mas funds as a gift for Jesus. With chil­dren, they can par­tic­i­pate by doing extra chores to earn money/wages for the Jesus gift.

‘And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my broth­ers, you did it to me.’” (Matt. 25:40)

Decide now if there is a needy family, relief agency, mis­sion­ary, or local min­istry that your family could give to. Start pray­ing on their behalf. Get cre­ative. Maybe you could serve them in a par­tic­u­lar way if you do not have funds to give. We can all seek to give a gift to the Giver of Life and receive great bless­ing and joy in return!