My Christmas Prayer

 

God, thank you for the way you’ve blessed me and my family.

Thank you for your love, your grace, and your peace!

Thank you for loving me in spite of my sin, my mistakes, and my selfishness.

Thank you for sending us your son to die for my sin.

 

Thank you for entrusting me in the areas of leadership and giving me the responsibility to serve others.

Help me to take my leadership and responsibility seriously and to always do what is right.

Give me strength to persevere when I feel like giving up.

 

Lord help me to love others the way you loved.

Fill my heart with compassion for people, especially the poor, outcast, and marginalized.

Fill my mind with thoughts and ideas that will guide me to help others.

 

I pray God you will help me in the areas I am week.

Surround me with people who are talented in areas I am not.

Help me to find people who are willing to serve you and will join in this Kingdom Restoration.

Give me the wisdom to understand and do your will.

 

God you are amazing and I’m so happy you are my life.

I’m glad you understand me and pray you will help others who don’t understand me.

I pray that I can live at peace with ALL of your creation,

and may you guide me as I work to help others understand and live at peace

with ALL of your creation.

 

God I pray you will;

Use me.

Heal me.

Ruin me.

 

This is my Christmas prayer! 

Hear me now as I pray….Amen! 

 

Oh Christmas Eve

It’s Christmas eve and I’m sitting in my game room waiting for my U-verse to reset since I just upgraded to receive their HD package.  I’m excited!  They gave me an awesome deal and even with the upgrade my bill will be dropping.  Yes!  Christmas comes early for the second time this year.

I was reminded this morning, as I took my son to purchase a gift for his mother, how excited children get for opening up presents.  I’m either getting really old or it’s just not as exciting for me anymore.  Maybe my perspective has changed from gifts to friends, because as I shopped this morning all I could really think about were friends.  Friends from high school, college, and current friends who are really important to me, like the ones who sit on my board of directors for Retread.  I value and appreciate them so much.

This year has been incredibly challenging and I’ve had to overcome some major personal struggles.  I’m still working on some, but I’m confident I wouldn’t be where I’m at today, if it weren’t for friends.  It has really been a defining year and it’s helped me realize how important my friends truly are.  I’ve learned I can’t live my life alone and the importance of community, friendship, and being surrounded by people who I love is vital to my ability to exist. 

I’m confident this Christmas eve will continue to be filled with memories and thoughts of friends and those memories and thoughts are such a wonderful gift to me this Christmas.  I’m excited about the new year and what it holds and look forward to developing new friendships, redefining old ones, and spending more time with the friends who are currently in my life.

I hope today, you’ll spend some time thinking about your friends and consider the true gift they are in your life.  Merry Christmas!!!

King for a Day

On Monday I felt like I was King for a day.  It wasn’t because I sat at jury duty all morning, it was because of the shoes I got to deliver to some very appreciative inner city children.  It all started about a month ago, when a friend emailed me and told me his company wanted to do something for the kids at one of our schools.  I quickly emailed the counselor and asked her if it would be okay to bring around 30 pair of shoes to their kids.  She obviously said “yes!”

Eventually we received the list of 34 names, shoes sizes, teachers names, and grade.  Then my friends company went to work.  They had no problem providing us with all 34 pairs of shoes, which included all kinds of fun things stuck in wrapped boxes, like socks, gloves, and candy.  In addition to all the shoes, they also raised about $200 for our non-profit Retread.

The real fun started when all 34 pair were dropped of at our house on Saturday.  It definitely looked like Santa had arrived!  Monday after jury duty I loaded up the car and headed to the school.  When I arrived I went in search for Ms. Barbara’s cart that normally sits in her office.  We both arrived at her office at the same time.  When she told me we could probably deliver the gifts to the class room I was really excited.  I normally don’t get to see the kids, because they are in class and we don’t like to interrupt their studies.  But, this day was different.  It’s almost Christmas and counselors and teachers are often more likely to bend the rules when it’s Christmas.

I loaded up the cart and headed to the class room with all the gifts.  When I pushed the cart through the door the whole room erupted into cheers, clapping, and many thank yous!  Then there were about 12 children who spontaneously jumped from their seats and ran to give me big hugs around my waist, each saying thank you as they squeezed.  Smiles were overflowing from the faces of all the children, teachers, Ms. Barbara, and of course from me.

I certainly felt like a VIP and the kids just made my day.  I wish I could have stayed and watched them open their gifts, but they were not allowed to open them until after class.  Otherwise the teacher wouldn’t get any work out of them for the rest of the day.  My guess is she had a difficult time any way!

There’s so much joy in giving.  I wish all the world could experience my day on Monday.  I wish everyone could see the smiles, the excitement, and the wonder on the children’s faces.  I heard some of the boys say “these are new shoes” and they were still just as excited!  Children excited about shoes!  You need to stop and ponder that thought and image for a few minutes.

Screwooged

I know that people feel like times are tough in America right now, but do we really have it so bad?  Most of us enjoy a warm and comfy bed every night and we generally get three plus meals a day.  Most of us need nothing and if truth be told, our needs generally turn out to be wants and addictions for consumption.

Lately the news has been filled with doom and gloom and with reports of economic crises, a volatile stock market, new president elect, and big corporations failing left and right, you would think people would want to be a little cautious with their spending.  However, I’ve not seen a slow down this Christmas at the malls or stores I’ve been to and friends seem to be spending just as much if not more this year for gifts.

I’m probably as guilty as most.  I’ve not stopped spending and even though we’ve cut back on the number of Christmas presents we buy for family, we still tend to spoil our son.  He already has so much, why do we think he needs more?  Why do we think we need more?  Why do we always assume that we are owed or deserve something?

I ask these questions because of a recent situation we found ourselves in with friends.  We have all been working with the kids at The Samaritan Inn, a local homeless shelter, since February and wanted to plan a little Christmas outing for the kids we’ve become friends with.  We decided to organize a party for them at a local business that offers “Jump House” entertainment.  We felt it would be a great opportunity for the kids to get out and burn off a little energy at the same time. 

When we approached the business and talked to the manager about the event, who it was for, and why we were doing it.  I think we all assumed they would be as excited about it as we are.  We also expected, as a non-profit organization working with homeless kids, to get a great deal or at least a discount to help offset the cost.

What we got in return was a person who offered noting.  No discount.  No deal.  No compassion for the situation, for our organization, or the children.  And when we asked questions about the different deals they had, we had to be very careful about what we decided on, because the price seemed to change and become more expensive, not cheaper, when we tried to negotiate the best deal.

This left all of us feeling frustrated and feeling like we’ve been violated in some way.  We couldn’t understand why someone wouldn’t have compassion for children.   Why they wouldn’t help a local non-profit and why the rules couldn’t be bent this one time in order for some needy children to have a great Christmas party.

The more I’ve thought about it the more I’ve come to realize my feelings are a result of individualism and entitlement.  Feeling like I’m owed something or entitled to more than what someone else may be entitiled to,  just because we are trying to do good.  I’m not sure it’s supposed to work this way.  We could easily continue to argue it would have been the right thing for this business to do, but how do I know they aren’t struggling this Christmas due to the economic strains on the small businesses in America?  How do I know they aren’t just wanting what so many of us already have?

I certainly have been financially blessed this year and 2009 is already looking really good for my company and my family.  I know I can afford to pay for all the kids at The Samaritan Inn to have a great Christmas party, so today I’m sucking it up and confessing my weakness in the area of entitlement and will do my best, on Sunday when I walk into this business, to put on a smile and make the workers there feel like we are appreciative of the opportunity to use their facility, because  I think that’s the right thing to do!