Start A New Christmas Tradition

Every since my children become of age to understand the true meaning of Christmas, I've shared with them something that has become a personal tradition for me each holiday season and that is I strive to go out of my way to help someone each and every day.

Helping someone can be pretty widely interpreted and that's what makes this not only fun and creative but also very satisfying....since it brings us closer to how the Lord commanded us to treat our fellow man.

It could be as simple as stopping and keeping a door open for a mother and her children. It could be pulling over to help someone with car trouble (even though you're in a hurry...and aren't we always in a hurry?), or going to walmart and buying a case of blankets and giving them out to homeless people in your community you run across.

You get the idea here...it can be as little or as big as you want to make it. But once you start doing this, a couple things are going to happen:

1. You are going to make a number of people very surprised and happy as they are going to receive something from someone they've never met (re: being a good Samaritan).
2. You are going to be amazed how your internal radar will begin actively looking for people in need, while most times we walk through life looking to avoid conflicts or people that will slow up down in our daily rat race.
3. You are going to feel fantastic! Since we are internally hot wired to be loving and compassionate to those in need, you will find that living life like we were meant to live, brings an incredible and largely indescribable feeling of joy. And besides that of course, the Bible tells us that we will be storing up treasure in heaven.

So start this new tradition on December 14th, with our new "Twelve Days of Christmas", where each day comes with a your gift of a good deed or helping hand given to someone in need. Keep track of them, write them down (in your journal or on your blog, facebook etc....), make it a contest with you kids, your office-mates, your homegroup or ministry.

But a warning.... one other benefit to doing this is, that you'll want to do it more, not just during the Christmas holiday, but every month of the year. So watch out...doing good selfless deeds, is contagious!

If you take challenge on, make sure to send me a note....let me know how it goes and what you accomplished.

R.J. Luedke
www.headpress.info