The Stillroom

How close are you to being ready for Christmas?  If you’re like me you’re not as close as you’d like to be with only one week left.  With all the hustle and bustle to get caught up in this week: the traveling and the food and the preperation and the last minute shopping, we desperately need to take the time and relax…to think…to be thankful…to enjoy…to think of others; and not just what present to get them either, but to really be heart-felt in our everyday encounters with one another. 

You know what my thought is on all those sappy Christmas books, songs, and movies are… people write them and sing them and watch them because they know that we need to be reminded.  Reminded of the fact that there can be a little bit of Ebenezer Scrooge in us all; a pinch of the Grinch in us all.  Why do we save those stories for Christmas when we need to be reminded of that all year.  Not reminded on how lousy we all can be from time-to-time, but how much we all really do have to give to one another.  To quote the genius Dr. Suess, what we really have to give ‘will come without ribbons! It will come without tags! It will come without packages, boxes, or bags!’

Here is my challenge to each of us this Christmas season:  GIVE BEYOND YOUR MEANS.  If you do this right it shouldn’t cost you a single cent.  Give gratitude, give respect, give comfort, give a hug.  And with any luck all of our hearts will grow three sizes this Christmas.