I’m not a natural giver. It doesn’t come easy to me. But an idea came to me [that I probably heard from someone else though I can't remember who it was] to have a yard sale and give all the stuff away.

No tags. No haggling. No $1 boxes or $2 books.

Just everything for free.

I wanted to DO something for Christmas Change. I’m pretty good about writing inspirational things and yet making sure my own words never change my own life.

And I didn’t want to do that this time.

So I sent an email to my friends- “let’s give our stuff away.” And they brought boxes and boxes and filled my guest bedroom to overflowing.

Nashville has a surprisingly large population of refugees from all over the world. So we hung up signs at the refugee centers saying, “Come over on Saturday and take our stuff.” [I mean, that isn't EXACTLY what the signs said, but you get my drift.]

And here’s the result.

[Forgive me for not wearing makeup. It was 7am on a Saturday. Can you blame me?]

Merry Christmas, y’all.

Have you ever had the feeling that you were seeing the same thing around every corner? Whether it is going to Seattle and seeing a Starbucks every two blocks or driving cross country on the interstate and seeing signs for McDonalds at every other exit. It seems that life occasionally has its seasons of repetitive speaking. Sometimes it whispers and then it starts to yell. Recently it has been a season of shouting for me.

When it came time for the Creator to personally engage in the redemption of people, he did so in an obviously perfect yet seemingly dangerous way. Jesus was to be born as a man and die like a man. What has been so striking to me is the PLACE that all of this took place. God’s agent of redemption was to be given a family, a mother and father. Out of this cohesive covenant would come the Christ. The family would be the vehicle through which the Savior would be carried. Jesus would consummate what was begun in the Garden with the first family’s privilege of filling the earth with the knowledge of the the glory of the Lord.

What I’ve found so thought provoking is that God would not only trust but entrust the Messiah to a young woman and her husband. It adds to my growing belief that it is inside of the family that the seed of redemption has been planted by God. It is his design within the created order that husbands and wives, Mommies and Daddies, men and women accept the task to act as agents of redemption. This begins first in the home itself and then is grows and spreads as every good healthy garden does.

So, back to the shouting that has been taking place in my life. I can’t pinpoint the week that it started happening, but I do know that its been going on for some time now. So many of our friends have been discussing and deciding that adoption is one of the greatest privileges and displays of redemption. As you read this, some of our good friends are in route to get their son, Simeon, from Ethiopia. A few days ago, some other friends passed the court process to adopt their little girl Sosi from Ethiopia as well. (Who knows, maybe they’ll get married).

I was certainly cut to the heart watching the Michael Oher story in the movie The Blind Side. The Tuohy family was a great portrayal of the redemptive power of family. I had been praying a fairly specific prayer lately that God is seeming to begin to answer. I’ve been asking God to bring someone into our family that we can love and share our life with, someone with whom we would normally not interact. Through a very humorous, but obviously ordained scenario, my wife has met and befriended a young girl from her Bible study group has been through it all. We are hoping and praying to be a part of her restoration process.

I often eat lunch with my daughter in Kindergarten on Fridays.  I’ve met most of the kids in her class, and not all have been raised in a family of redemption. While it is heartbreaking, I leave every time knowing exactly how my wife and I are to view our home together. It begins in the willing hearts of the parents (like Mary and Joseph) to accept the change.

Next in line is the daily life-giving attitude and assignment that we have to raise our children to fear the Lord and worship Him alone. Along the way, then, the family is called to be an agent of redemption and restoration to others outside the home. From welcoming in a hurting friend from school, to befriending an international student from the local university, to serving a single mom while she makes her way through life on her own, to going to the ends of the earth and adopting a child, we are all to act.

THE HOME is the place that God has entrusted the responsibility of redemption by being couriers of the grace that is given in Jesus Christ.

Greg Harris defines a household as “people and possessions managed for a purpose.” May we all knowingly act in the truth that our purpose is redemption by pointing others to the Great Redeemer of our Souls, Jesus Christ. 

written by Finley Robinson

The following guest post is exactly what I needed to hear today. Monte Peterson from thefoodsmith lives in Hong Kong with her family, and it gives me shivers to read her perspective here:

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Chris-mis Everywhere

It stabs me a little every time I hear his sweet voice lisp “Chris-mis!” He’s so excited, but what he points to as he says it are elaborately decorated trees, mall displays of Santa, gilded bells, gifts and garlands. To him, “Chris-mis” is everywhere.

This is our second Christmas in Hong Kong, our home for the last year and a half. Friends often ask if they “do” Christmas in Hong Kong. Yes, I say, laughing. Hong Kong is the shopping capital of the world–of course they “do” Christmas.

I have for many years tried to create a distinction between Advent and Christmas in our home … waiting to decorate, waiting to sing Christmas carols. We lived for so long in rural areas without a tv that it was easy to ignore the commercial aspects of the season.

But now we are in Hong Kong, where we walk through malls everyday. And as much as I hate to hear my son look at a snowman and call him “Chris-mis” I am a little embarrassed to admit that the decorations are a comfort, even the tacky ones. “I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas” brings a tear to my eye and a beautiful store display of a fireplace hung with stockings can stop me in my tracks.

We really are quite content with life in Hong Kong. It’s just that this time of year brings on wave after wave of homesickness, and so the nolstalgia and sentimentality of the mass-produced Christmas gets me. I know that my decorating and baking are as much a bid to stave off loneliness as they are a means of preparing for and celebrating the Incarnation, but I don’t know what to do with that.

The truth is, this year we have something in common with Mary and Joseph–themselves far from home–and with the millions of refugees and immigrants in our world. Moreover, while the feeling of homesickness may be particularly acute for those of us literally far from the land of our birth, being homesick is simply part of the human condition. We are strangers in a strange land, every one of us homesick for the coming Kingdom.

And so we’re not ignoring the (purely secular) “Chris-mis” out there–we’re just inviting Christ into it, to hallow and redeem our baking, our singing, our “making merry.” If the incarnation is about nothing else, it is about Jesus coming to be with us right where we are, even in a mall or a tiny flat in a crowded city.

We are eating lots of traditional meals, even though the imported ingredients are costly. And we are baking our favorite Christmas cookies in a tiny toaster oven. We have more friends here than ever who have never heard the story of Jesus’ birth, so we are offering lots of hospitality, welcoming people into our celebrations. To paraphrase Frederick Buechner, my need to be festive meets the world’s need to be included, and there is great joy.

Mostly, I’m resisting the urge to turn inward and only create something special for my family, and in so doing, I find that my son is right. “Chris-mis” is everywhere.

When we accept the chasm between our plenty and the world’s lack, our first response might be something else we have to move past on our way to Christmas Change.

Guilt.

The Problem With Guilt

I believe that if we only respond to the need of the world with guilt feelings, we won’t experience the kind of heart, family and culture change we’re longing for, the kind to which we are called. Resolutions founded in guilt go the way of many Monday morning diet plans.

The problem with guilt is that it is still primarily self-focused. Guilt is not about the suffering of the world, or even the softening of our hearts. It is about how badly we feel about what we have done or left undone. It is still about us.

Guilt paralyzes. We can become mired in our own emotional reaction until real world action seems impossible. What can we do for a suffering world? We want to stop feeling badly about ourselves, so we make a token gesture to push the guilt away.

From Guilt to Conviction and Creativity

We can move past guilt to a place of conviction. Conviction looks at the space between our abundance and a needy world and asks, “How can I respond?  In what ways do I need to be changed by this?” The convicted soul longs to be transformed both in action and for action.

I think this distinction, between the self-paralysis of guilt and the power of conviction, is especially important as we introduce our children to Christmas Change.  Making our children feel guilty about all the toys they own or the ones they’re asking for won’t sow the seeds for compassion and empathetic generosity. (Dinner table clean plate lectures, anyone?)

Instead, as we talk with our kids about the world in need and its implications for our own celebration, we’ll have to get creative. As we show them the need for clean water, or schooling, or food security, let’s make available to them the tools they need to respond. This could be a shoebox to fill, a trip to the grocery store with a food pantry’s wish list, or a first letter written to a newly sponsored child. Being ready both to guide and to incorporate their ideas says loud and clear that they can contribute, they can make change happen. And as they do, their hearts will be changed as well.  This powerful combination of spiritual revolution and present, practical action is woven everywhere in the ministry of Jesus, the ministry He beckons us to join.

We are all made in the image of God, the wildly creative incarnational Giver. And in His glorious economy, as we offer ourselves to be used in the world He made, He continues to break and remake our hearts, and give us a lamp for our feet. As we move beyond guilt, we follow Him into real change.