Christmas and Relationships

What do you love the most about the holidays? I know some might say the time off from work, or going hunting, or even the ball games.  But I think most of us truly enjoy the family time we have together, both with family and friends we see all the time, but also with those we only see rarely.
Here's a quote from Robert Dodd in a little Advent Devotional book I am reading:

The only thing we take out of this world with us is our relationship with God and our relationships with one another. Everything else we leave behind: our wealth, our possessions, our homes, our cars, even the clothes on our backs. Our relationships are responsible for making us the persons that we are. We are part of everyone we meet and even of the people we have not met whose stories are familiar to us.  This means that we should give a top priority to our relationships.

Our local "family friendly" (that title is apparently more "pc" than the label "Christian") radio station is encouraging people to do Random Acts of Christmas.  The idea is to just find someone you can help, in a big or small way.  And try to do it every day, or as often as you can through the holiday season.  I like the idea, and want to encourage all my readers to try it.

The people around us are important, and should be a priority.  David preached a sermon today in our homechurch about how we treat our family and friends.  One of his comments he made was how so often we call others names.  Sounds childish, but we do it.  How many times could someone catch you calling "pig" to a cop? Or muttering "idiot" under your breath when the boss walks by? How we treat people is who we really are. 

This holiday season, try to do a small, random act of kindness every day.  Get your kids involved in this project at some level, but mostly these acts will happen at the spur of the moment, with a right now kind of timing. Don't put a great deal of thinking into this because trying to come up with some- special- something -for- someone will bog you down and cause you not to do anything at all.  Just do it.