[Becky]

Hey Brian! how are you doing?

[Brian-Alexander]

Things are going good here. I'm ejoying my second semester of college.

[Brian-Alexander]

As I begin to think about the Christmas season and what it means I can’t help but think of the people in the world who have nothing. Sure this is a very popular blog topic this part of the year, but it really is something that we all need to think about. I had a great birthday, and got a lot of stuff, but I started thinking. Why do I need all this for my birthday? It would be so much better if I gave what I already have to people who need it. These material things that I have received will be worthless to me in a year or so. I can’t tell people not to give me anything, because they still end up getting me something. I even tried that last year and I got as many presents as the year before.

I went to church last night and the youth group had a Christmas party. Here is the deal..each person who came last night brought a gift and we exchanged them with each other. The price spent per gift was around $5. Matt, the youth minister, came up with a pretty lame game in order for everyone who brought a gift to get somebody’s gift. As this was going on some of the other youth leaders were saying that you could steal somebody’s gift if you didn’t like your own. This certainly was not the right way to word what they were trying to say of exchanging the gift. Sometimes things like that bother me. Especially when there are new attenders in the church, we often times contradict what the bible says..even when we don’t think we are.

Here is something else. My brother made the comment on our way home that $100 was wasted tonight. I asked him why he said that. He said that out of all of the gifts that were given out tonight (probably around 30 or so) none of them had any eternal value. I immediately agreed and began thinking about why would our church do something for each other and not to serve or give back. Just makes me wonder how many other churches are doing the same thing. Instead of giving gifts to each other we need to give to people who don’t have anything and not waste money on crap.

What do you all think? Am I wrong for thinking like this?