Loving All This Christmas Season

During this Advent Season, we are looking at worshiping Christ, spending less, giving more, and loving all. These concepts come from a book called Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World? 

We are about to observe the final Sunday of Advent, before Christmas Day. Let's check in on how we are doing with the past few weeks' challenges from the Advent Conspiracy

How are you doing with worshiping Christ fully?

How are you doing with spending less?

How are you doing with giving more?

Now we are to the final theme: loving all. Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy, right? Maybe, but then again maybe not.

We normally give gifts to those we know and love...or at least appreciate: family, friends, teachers, postal workers, pastors, etc. So we're acing this one, no changes needed!! But all is very inclusive. All includes the jerk who cut you off in traffic, the slow lady checking out at the grocery store, the friend who hurt your feelings, your enemy, and the people you'd rather not see & interact with.

We are fairly decent at loving those who we know and love, but this begs the question: What about those we don't know? I'm not talking about handing out gifts to random strangers on the street (although that might be interesting), but what do we do for the poor? The hungry? The sick? The prisoner? The orphan? The widow? The stranger? The refugee? Both in our country and around the world?

Matthew 25 spells out how Jesus identifies as these people and receives our service to them as if we served Christ Himself. So how can you serve Christ this Christmas as you love all around you and around the world?

Luke 14:12-14 records a challenge Jesus gave to a host of a party: don't invite those who will invite you back in turn, but rather invite the poor, crippled, lame, and blind...those who can't repay you. Who can you invite to your Christmas celebration or dinner party? Is there a widow who needs an adoptive family? Is there a missionary kid who can be with their family at Christmas? International or college students who can't travel back home for the holidays? Who can you make room for at your table who may not be in a season of life where they can repay you?

What else can we do?

We can donate to a charity that empowers those on the fringes of society like Project Heifer.
We can support a fair trade business that employs those who struggle to make ends meet like 10,000 Villages.
We can open our homes and our hearts to the lonely around us.

There are people in the world in desperate need of love. The question is: Will we give unconditional love as freely as Christ gave it to us?

What other ways can you love all this Christmas season?