Don't Mess with my Christmas

Is it really better to give…..????

“It is more blessed to give than to receive.” There is not a one of us who has not heard these words. Usually the guy who quotes this is wanting something from us revealing the fact that he actually believes that it is more blessed to receive. Otherwise, why is he not giving to me – if indeed it is so blessed to give?

And at Christmas time we quote these words to our Children when they get the "greedies". And our Children watch us. Do Mom and Dad really believe this?

I dare you to go find this verse in the Bible. Why? It is scary. That is why. When Paul quotes Jesus it doesn’t have anything to do with giving money or presents. Paul is walking into what will be chains, imprisonment, and possible death. Every one is crying and begging him not to go. “It is more blessed to give,” he says. “It is more blessed to give.”

Give up your comfort? Give up your safety? Give up your life????? And back comes Paul’s answer using Jesus words, “It is more blessed to give.”

So it is Christmas time. How are we applying these words during the season we most often hear them quoted? It just seems completely inappropriate to apply them to the buying of gifts for family and friends so we will in turn have to build additions onto our house or have to go to rent some storage space to fit it all. So how are we…Wait…let me rephrase that … how am “I” giving up my comfort this Christmas? How am I giving up my safety? And why would I want to do that anyway? After all Christmas is all about family, right? About cookies and food and fun games together? About eggnog, apple cider, hot chocolate and biscotti in front of the fire in the pure and uninterrupted bliss of my own family’s comfort and safety? Please say it is so. It’s about beauty…right – Christmas trees, lights, pretty packages, gorgeous table settings - all which declare the glory of God…right?...right?

And yet if we open our ears and listen, we hear the words from of Paul.

"In everything I showed you that by working hard in this manner you must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that He Himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive.'"

Help the weak? What has that to do with anything at Christmas? Oh yeah I throw in a few dimes at the Fred Meyer Bell ringing Santa lady...I help the weak. Sort of.

But I know helping the weak means leaving the safety and comfort and the beauty and warmth of my own home – it’s about stepping into the cold and scary world and into lives racked with loneliness, pain, and other things I prefer not to think about at Christmas.

Do I believe it or not? Is it really more blessed to step into the cold, uncertainly, and pain of someone who is weak and hurting – someone who I might not even know? Is that more blessed?

There is only one way to know for sure. Try it.

Last Christmas my family made a small and feeble attempt at taking the Lord at his words. We put these words to the test by a grand experiment. “Kids. It is Christmas Eve. The night we all like to stay at home and bask in the glow and comfort of this place. So we are stepping out. Let’s go.”

Just a mile away there is a retirement home. With my guitar in hand, we go from room to room visiting those who have no family, no home, no decorated cookies, no warm fire. SO many all alone on Christmas Eve with nothing but the company of the TV glow in their room. We turn down the TV and start to sing. We sing a story about another who gave up the comfort of his home. Of one who stepped into a cold and hostile world racked with pain and suffering.
The tears begin to fill the eyes of this dear old woman – left alone here on Christmas Eve.
Pure joy fill the face of the young boy too severely brain damaged to function in this world as he claps along.


The Christmas songs suddenly made sense in a way they never had before.

What a privilege. What an indescribably joy. But we were sad for we could not get to every room. There were just too many sick. And our small family – we were the only ones there singing on this Holy night. Where were the others? Where had I been the last 42 Christmases?

I cannot explain it. To leave the warmth of our own home, to step into the lives of those so alone and in so much pain. We had nothing to offer but a hand to hold and a song. I can’t explain it, but this was Christmas.

So I dare you. See if it is true. Step out of the comfort and into the pain – and then taste and see if indeed it is truly better to give than to receive.

You can only know if it is true – if you try.

The Perfect Harvest

"Find out how much God has given you and from it take what you need; the remainder is needed by others."

Saint Augustine

Maybe this would be the year. Probably not. But maybe. If the weather would just cooperate in a big way. Maybe. You see, as a 9-year-old I had a dream; to go to Disneyland. But the problem was big. It was out in California, and I lived on a farm in Nebraska. It was a long ways off, and it was more than we could afford. Disneyland had its grand opening in 1956 when I was four years old, and for my ninth birthday I asked Dad – like I had every birthday before, “Can we go this year?” He always said, “If the rain comes down ‘just right’ and if we get a crop that is ‘just right’,” then we’d go. So I prayed that this year – 1961 – that the rains would come down ‘just right’. “God, give us a harvest like never before. Make it perfect.”

We owned a couple thousand acres just to the west of Meridian Creek. Just across the creek, our friends and neighbors, the Eastmans, owned an almost identical farm of 2,000 acres. We grew the same crops and raised the same animals. They had 4 kids, the same ages as the kids in our family; problem was, the one my age was a girl. Jennifer. All my other siblings had someone their own age and “kind” to play with but me – the only one my age was a yucky girl. Oh well. Anyway, the Eastmans also held out the hope for that ‘perfect harvest’ so that both families together might head out to California, and the “big D,” as we called it.

Well, I had prayed that the weather would be perfect, and it had been. My dad said it had been a perfect winter and spring and that the soil was just right for planting. The seeds went into the ground and in no time they were growing. Dad was so encouraged. Never had the crops come up so plentiful. I could look down and across Meridian Creek and see the sprouts as beautiful and as plentiful as they had ever been both on our land and on the Eastmans’ land. “Hey,” I thought, “Maybe the Eastmans would be going with us to Disneyland.”

A week and a half went by with no rain. We had no irrigation at that time and so I got nervous. I was in danger of losing Disneyland. I prayed like mad that night. Dad said we needed it now if we were going to have that perfect harvest I had been praying for. I prayed right then. And right when I had finished my prayer … I heard thunder. It was so neat. It poured that night for about 15 minutes, soaking everything. Or so I thought. I woke up the next morning to run and see our crops. It was beautiful. My Dad stood there with me – and he said the words I wanted to hear, “A perfect rain.” We glanced down the hill toward Meridian Creek and the property line we shared with the Eastmans. Dad got a strange look on his face and started down the hill. I followed out of curiosity. As we got closer to the creek I could see why he was so puzzled. The soil on the east side of the creek was dry. The storm had poured on our side, but had left our neighbor’s side conspicuously dry. “That thunderstorm last night,” Dad said, “for some reason decided to rain on us but not the Eastmans. Strange. Boy, they sure need the rain.”

Just from that rain alone, our crops jumped way ahead of the Eastmans’. I was happy ‘cause it meant Disneyland for me, but my hopes that the Eastmans might come with us seemed crushed.

Five days later, it rained again. Brilliant lightning. Unbelieveable thunder. I loved the sound of the huge raindrops on our roof. They meant life – not only for our crops, but for us as well. It was a soaker. Again Dad said it was ‘perfect’. I rejoiced ‘cause I knew the Eastmans got the rain they needed to at least keep their crops from dying. I stepped out into the cool air left in the wake of the thunderstorm. I ran down to the creek and to my horror, it had happened again. Their soil was barely damp. It would not even reach the roots of the shallowest of plants. But ours was ‘perfect’. The rain on our side had never been more perfect.

I saw Mr. Eastman in his fields checking the soil. Disappointment was all over his face. When his eyes caught mine he walked over and said hi, and then he invited me along with my whole family over for dinner the next day after church. What a sweet man. They were hurting, but still they gave.

We knew if they did not get rain in the next few days, their crops were done. But on the third day it came. We had a perfect rain once again. But not really perfect at all. I cannot explain how or why, but the Eastmans were again left dry. The whole family was taking buckets from Meridian Creek to water their own personal garden that they had decided to keep alive right by the creek. It would be enough for their own food, but not enough for their animals or to pay any bills.

While our crops were the best they had ever been, I had to watch theirs wither and die on the other side of the creek. And as we watched our 2,000 acre crops grow healthy from the rains, we watched their whole family carry water and labor to get a small patch of vegetables to grow.

Why? Why such strange weather? Why were we so blessed while they seemed to be cursed?

Had they sinned in some way? That was the first question that came to mind. If they had, this would make sense. But the Eastmans were good people. They were leaders in our church. They were all kind. Even Jennifer was kind – sort of – even when I was mean to her. That was not the answer.

Were they lazy? If they had been, then they would be getting what they deserved. But they were working five times as hard as us to get only one-tenth the amount of crops. They were not lazy.

No matter how I asked the question, I could come up with no good answer.

Harvest time came. “Perfect.” That’s what Dad said. It was the dream harvest we had always longed for. It would be double our usual. Our profits would be so great that Dad could get the new tractor he had wanted and our trip to Disneyland could become a reality. It was everything I had dreamed and prayed for. Except for one very obvious thing.

When I looked down across Meridian Creek, I saw not a dream come true, but a nightmare. A family – just like ours. But because of the weather – decimation. Destroyed and without means. I sat on the hill overlooking their misfortune. I wanted to be happy about our success. I wanted to congratulate our family, but I realized that we ultimately had nothing to do with it. It had been the rains. As I looked over the Eastmans’ desert-like landscape, I wept.

Dad called a family conference. “Kids, we have the harvest of a lifetime. We need to decide what to do with it. I have promised you all that we will go to Disneyland. So come winter break, we are off to California!”

The words I had been living to one day hear. Words which should have been met by the screams of kids so excited they couldn’t contain themselves. Words…, that were instead met with … dead silence.

“I thought you kids would be happy. It is our dream come true. What’s wrong?”

Now, of course, Dad knew exactly why we were silent, but he didn’t let on.

“Dad,” I said. “The Eastmans.”

"What about them?”

“Dad, they have nothing. Why would God do this? Why give us twice what we need, and give them barely anything at all?”

"I don’t know honey, why?”

My question had answered itself. Twice what we need … twice what we need….

And then, it just spilled out of my mouth. “He gave us twice so we could give them half.”

I couldn’t believe I had said it. But more than that I couldn’t believe the reaction of my brothers. “Yeah. Yeah!” Excitement filled the air. The thought of giving to our neighbors excited us as much as the thought of Disneyland used to.

A few days before Thanksgiving, all of us kids climbed on top of a huge truckload of grain. The first of several we took that day down across Meridian Creek and up to the silos that stood empty next to the Eastman’s house. . .

I will never celebrate a Thanksgiving, I will never hear the word Disneyland, without my remembering . . . , without my seeing Mr. Eastman silently standing there on the bottom step of his porch – that single tear as it fell – clearing a path through the dust on his cheek. And Jennifer’s smile as she stood there holding his hand.

It was . . . the perfect harvest.

So why the strange weather patterns? Why such inequities? I finally understood. If it had rained on both sides of the creek, we would have never have known the great joy of giving to those who truly need. And they would have never have known the joy of seeing God meet their needs through their neighbors on the other side of the creek. Truly such inequities bring out the most beautiful and valuable thing this life has to offer – and it is not Disneyland – it’s a simple thing called love.