what did you get for Christmas?

So, what did you get for Christmas?  Here's what I received:

• rest
• time with family, from home and abroad, inside and outside
• great food
• ties, sweaters, and gift cards to sporting goods stores
• joy from watching my son play with his new toys

All in all, it was wonderful.  And very much like what I'm used to.  Most Christmases - no, every single Christmas that I can remember - was something like that.  Joyful, hopeful, warm.

But it wasn't this way for everyone in our community.  In fact, one teenager in Waterloo received a bullet wound for Christmas.

Take a moment to read that story from the Courier, just in case you thought about skipping over it and reading to the end of this post.

Seriously.  Take 30 seconds and read it.

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What did you think as you read that?  What did you feel?

I read that story when it was first published on Christmas day.  I think it came up in either my Twitter feed or one of my web readers.  And I read it in my living room, which was at that point an absolute disaster of wrapping paper, toys, candy, stockings, all mixed together by the hands of my 18 month old son.

As I read that story, I wondered to myself:

Did either of these boys in this story ever have a Christmas like I have had every single year of my life?  Did they ever have a Christmas like my son just did?

I don't pretend to know these boys' story, their family lives, their home life, or anything else about them.  And I'm going to do my best not to assume, to stereotype, or to dehumanize them by putting them in some sort of generic and distant category of "broken."

But:

I can't imagine the set of circumstances that would lead to my teenage son being at a bar early on Christmas morning.

I bet his parents didn't imagine that for him when he took his first few breaths and made his first few cries.

I bet he didn't think that he'd end up in a squad car on December 25th, 2011, facing incarceration and then potentially a life in and out of the justice system.

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This is the community into which we have been called.  And not to this part only.  But we'd be missing the target if we missed these families, these teens, these problems.

I want to share with you a story of how we have recently had the chance to impact these families.  As the year ended, we had some monies left over in our Urban Compassion budget.  We decided to bless the Boys and Girls Club - both their staff and the families that they serve - with the money.  Below is an email from Chuck Rowe, director of the Club, detailing how it was spent:

Last week, Carl Carey arranged for some awesome gift giving with his friends from Prairie Lakes Church.   His church raised about $2,500 to bring families in need, Christmas shopping.  Our staff identified Club Member families who were having a tough time this season.  Families would meet at the Club and then our staff or Prairie Lakes Members, would bring a person from that family shopping . . . To find gifts for the rest of their families.     Although we picked several families to attend, there were two that personally touched my heart.   

The first was a family, where a brother and sister come to the Club.  The brother is a handful to say the least.  He has such a hard time in school that they had to take him out of the school and put him in a class that focuses on kids who need extra help.   This young man has absolutely no attention span, and gets in his share of trouble.    However our staff loves him (and his sister) and do what we can but when we learned of his family background, it helped make sense to some things.   Their mother is not around, and his father is paralyzed from the neck down.   As a result the grandparents (who are older) have to raise the kids.  As you can imagine, this is not easy at all for the grandparents . . . Financially or discipline wise for the kids.    So when they went shopping, you could see and hear the joy in their hearts.   This opportunity could not have come at a better time and they were extremely grateful to our staff for selecting them. 

The second family I wanted to briefly tell you about was a family who had their house burn down last month.   When we selected them, the mother was so thankful and said that they had nothing due to the fire.  What a better way to help the family get back on track then to provide them with a fun Christmas for the kids.    What a life changing difference for them. 

Thanks Carl (and your friends from PL Church) for making this happen.   I know our Boys & Girls Club families needed that extra hand. 

In 2012, we are going to continue to ask how we can make an impact on Waterloo families.  We should be seeing some pretty cool opportunities to do so as a church as the year dawns.  But as we wait, let's not forget the admonition that James gave us:

Do not merely listen to the word, and so deceive yourselves. Do what it says. 
James 1:22

Comments

[DanO]

Another great post Jesse. I'm excited to see where God is taking the Waterloo campus.

[Lyn Eldridge]

Nathan will be 18 tomorrow. Never once in these first 18 years did I wonder, at 1:30am, where he was, what was he doing or if he'd be coming home. So, this comment, "I can't imagine the set of circumstances that would lead to my teenage son being at a bar early on Christmas morning", really gave me pause. We are so blessed to have the life we have, the support we have, the peace of knowing where our kids are every night. My heart is breaking for the kids that didn't have a warm Christmas and the parents who couldn't give it to them.

[Jesse Tink]

Thanks Dan.

[Jesse Tink]

Lynn - I know, right? There's a whole story there beyond the newspaper article. A lot of things, maybe even generationally, led up to those events. I'm trying to let that story prompt me to act.