Sunday, December 6, 2009

The Advent Conspiracy

Advent is here and it has been 6 months since my last post...so I thought I'd attempt to begin again. It is easy to fall out of the blogging groove. I guess that is true of most things in life: stop exercising or praying or reading your Bible (insert your favorite activity to slack off on) for a few days and it is hard to get motivated again. With the important things, we usually seem to cycle back again...so here is my attempt at cycling back!

I'm not sure I have anything to say about Advent that hasn't been said a million times before...so I will speak to something that has been convicting me: the idea of finding ways to give more (i.e. "Live simply so that others may simply live"). I really like the "Advent Conspiracy" website. I also have been reading their book: Advent Conspiracy: Can Christmas Still Change the World? by Rick McKinley, Chris Seay, and Greg Holder. The main premise of the website and the book is that we have lost the meaning of Christmas due to our preoccupation (even worship) of consumerism. They encourage us to take back Christmas by doing 4 things: 1) Worship Fully, 2) Spend Less, 3) Give More, and 4) Love All. There is much that is convicting and inspiring to me about those ideas, but for today, I just want to share an excerpt and a quote from the book that I found compelling.

First, the excerpt (p.13):
The water crisis around the world is staggering. Hundreds of children die simply because they don't have access to clean drinking water. It makes our mouths drop and our stomachs turn when we realize that the amount of money we spend on Christmas in America is close to forty-five times the amount of money it would take to supply the entire world with clean water. (see Living Water International for more information)

And a quote from C.S. Lewis (p. 61) challenging us to give more to the cause of Christ:
"I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more than we can spare. In other words, if our expenditure on comforts, luxuries, amusements, etc., is up to the standard common among those with the same income as our own, we are probably giving away too little. If our charities do not at all pinch or hamper us, I should say they are too small. There ought to be things we should like to do and cannot do because our charitable expenditure excludes them."

Just some thoughts that have been meaningful to me as I prepare for the coming of Christ...