I was reminded recently while listening to a podcast that the holiday season brings in a wide variety of emotions and experiences.

For some people it is family, friends, meals, gifts, joy, worship services, peace, and time off from their jobs.

For some people it is loneliness, missing loved ones, no money for gifts, stress, pressure, strife, hunger, and time off searching for a job.

And for others – it is some kind of mixture of the two lists mentioned.

With the birth of Jesus as the foundation of Christmas – how can we enter into or continue a lifestyle that seeks to rescue people who face the above listed struggles?

Author Max Lucado has done a brilliant job capturing the essence of sacrificing for our fellow-man in his book Cure for the Common Life. Christmas focuses on the birth of Jesus to save the world. This section elaborates on the life of Jesus as a model for how to serve the world:

God’s cure for the common life includes a strong dose of servanthood. Timely reminder: As you celebrate your unique design, be careful. Don’t so focus on what you love to do that you neglect what needs to be done.
    A 3:00 a.m. diaper change fits in very few sweet spots . . . Visiting your sick neighbor might not come naturally to you. Still, the sick need to be encouraged, garages need sweeping, and diapers need changing
     The world needs servants. People like Jesus, who “did not come to be served, but to serve” (Matthew 20:28 NKJV). He chose remote Nazareth over center-stage Jerusalem, his dad’s carpentry shop over a marble-columned palace, and three decades of anonymity over a life of popularity.
     Jesus came to serve. He selected prayer over sleep, the wilderness over the Jordan, irascible apostles over obedient angels. I’d have gone with the angels. Given the choice, I would have built my apostle team out of cherubim and seraphim or Gabriel and Michael, eyewitnesses of Red Sea rescues and Mount Carmel falling fires. I’d choose the angels.
     Not Jesus. He picked the people. Peter, Andrew, John, and Matthew. When they feared the storm, he stilled it. When they had no coin for taxes, he supplied it. And when they had no wine for the wedding or food for the multitude, he made both.
     He came to serve.

Great insight from a great author. So . .  what small, unannounced, behind the scenes, and humbling actions do we need to take in 2017 to keep the momentum of Christmas going??? May this be our greatest year of making a difference! 🙂