Open Gifts and Open Hearts

Dear Readers,

Five more days until Christmas!

This is the final week of "Sharing Christmas" and I must say that these entries truly have given me something new to look forward to on Mondays. The question posed this week: How do you keep CHRIST in Christmas? I couldn't see this answer or answer this question for myself until I learned to not think about myself so much. I had to learn how to give back.

Being home from college for the first time for over a week has opened up a wide window of one endless thing: time. No classes. No homework. No schedule. I didn't know what to do with myself for the first few days whatsoever. It felt strange to even go through the channels on TV. The most TV watching I had done was seeing a glimpse of whatever was on in passing of another person's dorm room. God decided to take this time and do some pulling on my heart. He started asking me to do little things. Conversations went a little something like this:

Heart tug. Heart tug. Heart tug.

"Ok, God. I see the dirty dishes in the sink, and this is my first time in the kitchen today. Can't I eat?"

Silence.

"Do the dishes first?"

"Yes."

They weren't exactly lengthy conversation. They were small and even sometimes unspoken. These little things weren't forced upon me or grudgingly done. I just couldn't understand what was going on. They didn't seem important, and would have been done eventually. But there was a drastic transformation that God started doing in my heart.

"Our people must learn to do good by meeting the urgent needs of others; then they will not be unproductive."- Titus 3:14

Conversation after conversation later I read this verse last night in my bed and couldn't help but smile. It finally made sense. Here I had been all break asking God, "What am I going to do? How am I going to help? Please, give me something to do so I'm not being completely lazy and idle." He had been giving me "something to do" all along. He was preparing me for an "urgent" need. In other words, God had to teach me to give in the small things before He openly laid before me something greater than I ever imagined. At that point, there will be no thinking twice about it, no matter what it was I had to give.

"For God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life."- John 3:16.

The Ultimate Giver is God Himself. He gave His Son, who gave His life, to give love so then all who followed Him would be able to give as well: our love, our passions, our gifts, our everything to bring glory to His name. What good is it to hold it back?

"Do not withold good from those to whom it is due, when it is in your power to do it"-Proverbs 3:27

Remember Christ this Christmas season in all you do to those around you,

and have a very Merry Christmas.

God Bless,

JB