Christmas, Listening, and Community

I absolutely love Christmas time! 

Well, I mean, if you could cut out all the crazy junk. For example….

My wife is never going to buy me a matching Lexus with a red bow on it….just not going to happen. Also, every KISS does not begin with Kay. I don’t know who she is, but it's not happening at my house. You also couldn’t pay me enough money to stand in a line 36 hours to buy something for 50% off in which the store only has 3 of them and there are 141 other people ahead of me in line. It just isn’t going to happen.

It just seems Christmas has become so incredibly noisy. Endless advertising. Rampant consumerism. Aggressive behavior. All of this and fights for our attention and it demands that we “listen” to it. And by default, listings to it means we are not listening to something else.  

But when we do stop, and we do listen, we often can hear the pain of others during our beloved Christmas season. And if the Gospel illustrates anything, it illustrates stepping into the need of a broken world with hope.

You, as a leader, have a unique opportunity to shape the thought and discussion among your community as it relates to listening to those around you, in your neighborhood, city, and world. What would it look like if you led your small group of believers to find an area of need and then you rallied around that person or family and lavishly loved them this Christmas…or any time for that matter? How would an unbelieving world look upon it? What would God do in your hearts as a result? 

Several years ago I heard this song, “One Last Christmas” by Matthew West. The song is inspired by the true story of one family wrestling with the soon to be loss of their young son to Leukemia. What is beautiful in this heartbreaking story is how the community rallied around them, and loved them lavishly. May we find opportunities to do the same.