I wonder sometimes of Christmas.
I wonder how a season filled with such joy can cause such despair. How hope can become hopelessness. How a holiday meant to bring us together can leave so many feeling alone.
I wonder sometimes of my blessings too, those things I too often take for granted and so cheapen. Not so during this season. Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. It is magic and faith and wonder. The stuff of dreams.
There are many who aren’t privy to such truth. Just the other day the local news carried the story of a man who robbed a Salvation Army kettle in front of a nearby Wal-Mart. According to the reporter at the scene, the man ran away with over six hundred dollars in donations and was heard screaming, “I hate Christmas!”
I wonder of him, too.
There are those who say that Christmas is for gifts and those who say it’s for The Gift. I suppose they’re both right. For Christians December 25 is a holy birthday party. Last year my kids even baked a cake with candles and a makeshift manger in the middle. (And when the first piece mysteriously disappeared, I said Jesus ate it. That won’t get me into trouble, will it?)
I like that notion of a birthday party, I really do. Christmas should be a celebration, a time when the good things of the world are brought to the forefront and the bad things are pushed to the side for later consideration. There should be lights and glitter and candles and cake. And there should be presents, too. Lots.
But how are you supposed to give Jesus a present?
I wonder that most of all.
But then I heard my friend Terri’s story of a stranger’s gift of ten dollars, and I had my answer. I knew that the love we have for God and the joy we feel for His blessings isn’t best expressed in song or prayer, but in deeds.
And what better way to give a gift to Him than in the same manner by which that first Christmas gift was given to us? Given to the undeserving with no fanfare and no expectation of return.
And that’s what the Ten Dollar Challenge is all about.
Katdish and Peter have worked their technological magic to provide both Simply Linked and a blog button for this little enterprise. Feel free to use both to share your story and spread the word. It’s dark out there, folks. Let’s shine some light, shall we?
If you’d like to add a Ten Dollar Challenge blog button to your blog, you get the code for it in the little box to the left.
