MENCOURAGEM SPIRIT BEING RICH IN THE LITTLE THINGS

Why is it the two best Christmases I remember are the two when it was most bare under the tree?

WRITER: RICK REED

The first was Christmas 1971. I was in college and we had just moved to North Fort Myers from New Jersey. My folks still owned our New Jersey home, so we had two mortgages — and no money for gifts.

There wasn’t even money to buy a tree, so my younger brother Stan and I hiked through the palmetto and pine scrubs looking for a candidate to chop down. Pickings were as slim as our gift budget. Finally, we spotted a tree on the side of the road. I’m pretty sure it belonged to the same genus as the tree chosen by Charlie Brown. It was so pathetic we could only use the top three feet.

We joyfully hauled home the beleaguered sapling, but our fun was only half done. Since all our decorations were still up north, we had to make our ornaments. We didn’t have much to work with except our imaginations and enthusiasm, but no Christmas tree looked more regal.

This past January, Stan gave me one of the remaining decorations I’d made so long ago to take home with me. I have no remembrances of the Christmases preceding or following that one, but 1971 remains dear to my heart.

The other sparse Christmas was 20 years later in 1991 after we’d moved to Tavares from Massachusetts. This time I was married with two girls and we rented our home. But we still had no money, because I was trying to break into writing and Nancy had just been laid off from her job. We got our gifts at yard sales and thrift shops — and my kids remember it as one of their best ever.

I’m reminded of a lecture series given during a men’s retreat. The speaker’s theme was peace and he used 2 Corinthians 6:1–10 as the key passages. The life of peace he described wasn’t an easy one. He listed some of the trials and tribulations Paul, the writer of Corinthians, experienced during his life of “peace.”

Paul wrote in verse 10: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.”

Wasn’t it like that for me those two Christmases? I received little materially, but felt like I owned everything.

Likewise, by worldly standards our first house wasn’t much. But it was the home where I brought both my precious newborn girls.

Square footage doesn’t make a house a home.

Having nothing yet possessing everything.

But, if we could have nothing and yet possess everything, can’t we also have everything — and possess nothing?

How many men have lost their families in the pursuit of gaining “everything”? Let’s not get caught up in things because things do not make us happy. And we don’t gain peace or happiness by pursuing them them

Peace and happiness are byproducts of a life characterized by wise choices lived right. That includes the righteousness that comes only from God and his Son.

Don’t worry about getting a big house or a new car — or even the big-screen television. Those things won’t produce lasting joy. Pursue the things that really matter.

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