Inspiration For Advent

Inspiration for Advent

If someone has enough money to live well and sees a brother or sister in need but shows no compassion—how can God’s love be in that person?

1 John 3:17

We are called to be the walking embodiment of God’s love—his presence revealed in tangible form. One significant way we reveal God’s love to others is by sharing our resources (time, talent, and treasure) to meet the physical needs of those around us.

Kendra, Kristin, and I have started a tradition for our families in which we combine the holiness of Advent with our call to reveal God’s love through acts of kindness during the days leading up to Christmas. While we always leave room for the Holy Spirit to move us in a different direction on any particular day, we generally plan out our acts of kindness sometime in mid-November.

Planning ahead while being flexible and willing to shift plans at the nudging of the Holy Spirit is key, at least for us, in successfully following through on our kind acts. Additionally, we intentionally do our acts of kindness to impact four different geographic regions: our local community, our state, our nation, and the world.

Broadening our perspectives to include the family down the street, the trafficked girl halfway across the world, and everything in between initiates important conversations about what it means to be blessed simply by living where we do. It allows us to switch between tangible acts of kindness (typically local in nature) and abstract acts of kindness (typically national or global), and it gives us parameters that help keep us from getting stuck doing the same kind acts year after year.

We also balance our kind acts across the financial spectrum—some of the acts we do are free or low cost, and some require a significant financial investment. This allows my husband and me to demonstrate for our kids that we can show compassion and generosity in many different ways. While it might be tempting to focus on the free or low-cost forms of kindness, God specifically calls us to financially care for those who have less than we do, and sharing our financial blessings is an important part of my family’s Advent observation.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Incorporate both the regional perspective and the full financial spectrum as you plan out your own kind acts during Advent.