The Christmas season is fast approaching, and it is in these weeks that I am able to look after one of my favorite “tasks” as a pastor at KVWC.
When I first arrived on the scene at Kings Valley, among other things, the management dumped several, annual tasks on my desk for me to look after. These tasks were all just names without faces at the time, but as the summer past, and we plowed through the fall, I had completed several of these “annual tasks”, all of which were far more time and energy draining than their unassuming names… “Evening on the Boulevard”…. “KV Corn-boil,” how hard could things like these be? Well, you do enough of them, it can get tiring and old. Needless to say, by the time my first December rolled around at KVWC my head and heart were nowhere near in the right place to tackle another “task,” this one called the “Christmas Blessing”. ”Christmas Blessing..” I could only imagine the hassle it was going to be. I didn’t want to do this at all… But I had to, so I did. And as I started talking to single moms and low income families, as I started organizing help for them and their children for the holidays I received a joy unlike any I had experienced at that point in ministry. It was in this, serving the people in our community that need it most, I was both scolded for being an ungrateful jerk, for not being quick to share the blessings God has given me, and I was blessed to my core by the spirit of charity, compassion and giving. And so here we are again, third year in a row working with these families, getting food and gifts for them and I couldn’t be more excited. Christmas is most CERTAINLY about giving, giving IS the gift. I am thankful that when God gave us Jesus, he wasn’t hoping to get an Ipod touch back from us… So, for the next six weeks or so, I will be extra inclined to give, of my time, energy and resources, and in this, I will receive. Now if only I can take this Christian… I mean, Christmas spirit and make it go all year round… That might just be what Jesus had in mind for his followers.
