To All The Saints In The Making … It’s Not YOUR Birthday!
December 2, 2011
What do we do on a birthday? We honor the honoree! Balloons, gifts, and by all means – cake! (I accept pies, btw) Since I was a child (yes, awhile ago), something has changed. I still see children giving gifts to a birthday girl/boy, but then they come home with all kinds of stuff – bags full! Is the term “party favors” still in use? So it looks like a pretty even trade. Throw in a pony ride and a roll of quarters for the arcade, and the guests make out better than he/she whose birthday it is – and their Mom and Dad don’t have to clean up. Words like “loot” and “plunder” fall to hand…
Trade out our birthday boy- or girl-child for the baby Jesus, and we’ve pretty much got the standard celebration of Christmas. Jesus, whom we honor, is in there somewhere. But it’s the rest of us that make out like bandits, with our own “haul” of said loot. Come on now, don’t we?
Not long ago, I referenced Michael Slaughter’s phrase, “It’s not your birthday!” That needs it’s exclamation point, as in Hey! People! Listen up! As people of faith, we’re called to a better way – right?
This season, unique for me, has me taking the stock about a number of things. One is what has become the answer to an oft-asked question: “What is it about Fairmont that has kept you there?” Quite simply: we give ourselves away. Jesus’ birthday is one of the key moments for that.
Elsewhere in this Focus you can read about the Robeson County Church & Community Center Christmas Store, thirteen White Christmas families and an adopted family (our partner: Wake Interfaith Hospitality Network), and a dinner hosted on, at all times, Christmas Eve. Ah, but this is a community of faith that simply cannot wait for Christmas to give itself away!
In 2011, we furnished an apartment for that family in transition, “adopting” them as our special charges. That process is still underway as they have now moved in. We not only “eat well and do good” here, but meals are shared with folks “going through.” Our trustees did a significant upgrade to a meeting space used 95% by outside groups, with another slated for the coming weeks. Early 2012 will see us establishing our “labyrinth,” a way not only for us to pray but to invite to prayer the community around us.
Did you know… six years ago this month, Stop Hunger Now had the first “meal packaging” event. We were there in good numbers, and have been ever since. It was not I who coined the term, but in a real sense, Fairmont served as the “incubator” for that young organization that now has packaged over 56 million meals – and plans 25 million more for 2012.
How else will we give ourselves away? After all, it’s HIS birthday!
Pastor Steve