I Can Make a Difference!!!

My son Dave, his wife, Joanne and granddaughter, Jenna, are not coming home for Christmas. We’ll miss them. We want to include them, but how? We can’t mail gifts to them because the mail where they live is not as reliable as it is in Canada. Packages tend to be opened and their contents shared long before they get to our loved ones. It would be easy to send money, and I’m sure it would be appreciated, but for me, that leaves Christmas out of the equation. I need to honor my faith in my gift giving.

The United Church’s “Gifts with Vision” Catalogue and Kiva’s Microloan Catalogue and others like them provide a wonderful smorgasbord of gifts that will help change the world through love. Every year we give each family on our list one of these gifts. This year, shopping in these catalogues will be even more fun. We’ll have more money to spend because these gifts will make up our entire package for Dave’s family.

We can support building a water treatment and supply plant for Duplan Secondary School in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. We can provide clothing, basic personal care, and pastoral support at St. Matthew’s-Maryland, West Broadway, and Oak Table community ministries in Winnipeg. We can stock a medical clinic in far off Africa. We can join with others to enable Domitila in Bolivia start a business making clothing so she can support herself and her family.  In a very real way, we can act to feed the hungry, care for the poor, and to change systems that perpetuate resource inequities.

Our faith calls us to make a difference. If you’ve never seen one of these catalogues, or experienced the joy of this kind of Christmas giving, it’s time you did. They’re available on line and at your local church. Make sure that this year, that at least some of your gift giving makes a difference in the world. For today, keep the thought:

This year, I want to give a gift that will transform someone’s life.

“On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary, and they bowed down and worshiped him. Then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.” (Matthew 2:11)