The holiday season is just around the corner and with it comes some mixed messages for kids, indeed, for all of us.
All of us are bombarded by commercials for toys, electronics, and other stuff. From Halloween to New Year’s, our culture is about indulgence, stuff, and lots of sugar. In other words, the focus is on consumption.
But the holiday season also brings the opposite message—it is the season when more churches engage in compassion projects than any other. From Operation Christmas Child to Angel Tree to adopting a needy family to singing Christmas carols at the local nursing home, the holiday season is often a time for outreach or remembering the less fortunate. The focus is on compassion, or at least, charity.
This can be confusing, for us and for the children we lead. Compassion or consumption? Which is it? No wonder we feel conflicted. Sometimes, we use compassion projects to appease our guilt for self-indulgence.
What we don’t realize is that seeing compassion as a holiday project rather than a lifestyle can actually be a type of consumerism. Jesus never called us to do service projects, he asked us to become servants. Don’t get me wrong. The trip to serve a meal at the urban soup kitchen is a good thing; it can be a way for us to have an experience that we find fulfilling and help others at the same time. But such projects can actually keep us from making compassion a lifestyle.
You may be planning to do some kind of service project this holiday season, either with your family or the kids you lead. That’s a great idea. But don’t stop there. This can be an opportunity to grow beyond random acts of kindness to a lifestyle of compassion.
Let’s say we go to the grocery store to buy food for a needy family but then act rude toward the checkout girl or impatient with the customer in front of us in line. Are we truly serving God? If we pack Christmas gift boxes for soldiers or poor kids but have not love, what good have we really done? God is looking to transform our hearts.
Now, before the holiday season begins, spend some time thinking about giving and serving. Decide now that you will avail yourself of opportunities to serve others—not just through projects or events but in your daily interactions. You may have the opportunity to do a service project, possibly with the kids you lead. This is a good start—I’m not against service projects. But use that project as a jumping off point for discussion about how following Jesus is a daily thing. Talk about how we can love and serve our friends and family as well as strangers.
Jesus said when you give, don’t announce it. That’s especially difficult when you do a charitable project. It’s a lot easier to do when service, as a spiritual practice, is just something you do each day in small seemingly insignificant ways. That is the gift Jesus calls us to give, not just during the holidays but each day.
Keri Wyatt Kent is a sought-after retreat speaker and author of seven books, including Simple Compassion: Devotions for Making a Difference in Your Neighborhood and Your World (Zondervan). Learn more at www.keriwyattkent.com.
