All of my Christmas recollections are positive, but one year really stands out in my memory. My wife and I had a desire to trade what we saw as the commercialization of Jesus’ birth for a practice more focused on others. We decided that rather than trading gifts, we would try something different. We set aside the amount of money we would normally spend and charged one another to invest it differently. Our individual goal was to find a need that another person had, then anonymously meet that financial need. Our gift to one another was a report of how we discovered the need, what the need was and how the need was met.
We found this unique practice very rewarding. While I’ve received a lot of great gifts over the years, this is the only gift I can remember bringing a tear to my eye…