by Pat Lamb (Author of: Let the Children Come; Children, Come to Me; When the Stars Fall Down; Widening the Church Doors to Teach the Narrow Way; My Thinking Book; Love is…) Books are available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, www.patlambchristianauthor.com
Train up a child
Giving Should be from the Heart
When my husband and I worked on the Navajo reservation several years ago, at one time we had a principal of our school who was one of the last survivors of the Mandan Indian tribe. On one occasion, his cousin came to visit him and gave him an air-conditioning unit for his car. Mr. Bearghost, our principal, in turn gave his cousin his favorite rifle. He explained to us that the custom of the Mandan tribe had always been to give as a gift to someone else the thing that meant the most to self. In keeping with this custom, when a man went deer hunting, the first deer killed was to be given away to someone else. The hunter could keep only the second deer killed.
“It is more blessed to give than to receive,” is a difficult lesson to teach children. It is something we adults often forget ourselves. However, it really is true. Some of the best memories of Christmas are those of pleasing someone else with a gift.
True love means giving up the wants and wishes of self for the benefit of others. The purpose of giving gifts at Christmas is to show love for others. It follows then, that to truly show love for others, we need to sacrifice the wants of self.
We should not go in debt to give gifts. By doing so, we are not really giving the gift, but the gift is being given by the one providing the money. A gift should come from our own means. When we give money to children to buy gifts, it is really the person who gave the money who is buying the gift. Children should examine their own means and abilities to see what they can give.
One of the best gifts that can be given is time. How wonderful it is when our grown children now come to visit me and they look around the house to see what needs to be done that is difficult for me to do. Every time they visit and leave, they have left the place in better shape than when they came. Small children, too, can learn that obeying and helping with chores can be a good gift for parents and others.
At a missions conference I attended, we were told that people in another country were praying for America because we had become too materialistic. Christmas is a time when we have a special opportunity to choose whether to put emphasis on materialism or to teach children that material things are not lasting and that there are more important things in life. At the current time, as we look at pictures on TV of homes burned in California and other places, we see a visual lesson of how material things do not last. In recent years and months, we have seen over and over belongings of people destroyed in floods, hurricanes, fires, ice storms, earthquakes, or tornados. These happenings should serve as a reminder to us that there are more important things in life than material possessions.
This Christmas season may we truly put emphasis on love of family and others instead of just accumulating “things”.