Getting it right

I do a lot of fussing about how church gets it wrong.  But today I am getting a chance to brag on how, sometimes, we are getting it right.

Sunday I went to my local church service in the morning and the pastor showed the video from Advent Conspiracy and talked about how and why our church is participating this year. In the evening, I traveled down to the mothership in Anaheim, and lo and behold another video… this time from TradeasOne.com talking about the importance of how and where we spend our Christmas dollars. Two services, two pastors encouraging us to think about Advent/Christmas in a new and hopefully better way. Way to go.

25 days of Advent

Inspired by this article I am starting my own 25 days of giving. I was sort of hoping that my project might have a clever name, but so far we are using the working title of 25 days of Advent. Not terribly original, but its all we got!

I started on Sunday, the first Sunday of Advent. And as a big old encouragement from the holy spirit, it happens that it was ‘church without walls’ day at church. So after a little worship, off we went to serve different people in the community. I unexpectedly spent some time wrapping Christmas gifts for a womens shelter. Today I purchased a gift for a 16 year old boy for Angel Tree ministries.  The idea is to find a way to give something to someone each day.

Some of the gifts are not so literal. For example, I have had several opportunities to give the gift of undivided attention. Yesterday, I got to give this gift to an 8 year old friend who is memorizing a (very long) cheer for an upcoming parade on Saturday. She was thrilled to show us her expertise with the pom-poms and the dance. While I was at the shelter, I was able to listen as some of the college students I was volunteering with talked about their plans for the future.  I’ve had the chance to offer the gift of organization to a harried pastor and also gave away a favorite jacket to a woman who needed it more than I did.

Only three days, so many opportunities to give. Once a day hardly seems enough and I am having a lot of fun with this so far. Its helping to ease my depression and deepening my Advent joy.