One of the gifts of being an Episcopalian is that Christmas lasts twelve days. In planning this trip to see my Bend family, I had all sorts of ideas of ways to celebrate each day.
At the beginning of Advent, I sent my grandboys a homemade Advent calendar, of sorts, with a card to open each day. In each envelope, there was a small card with a food item and a Bible verse. The first envelope had a one hundred bill to buy the food items. The plan was to buy the groceries during my Christmas visit and deliver them to someone who might be hungry.
Today, the second day of Christmas, was the day. My daughter-in-law suggested a local agency that serves those without homes called the Bethlehem Inn (how appropriate is that?). On their website, they had a list of items they actually needed so that became our revised list.
As we had made our plan on how to celebrate the second day of Christmas, the boys talked about sharing God’s love, and we decided to do something for someone else before we did something for ourselves.
We shopped the local Fred Meyer, and the boys used their $100 to buy two $50 gift cards. I matched their gift by purchasing the items on the list. The boys chose which specific meat, cheese, butter, cereal, paper goods and other items we would buy (the ones they would want for themselves) for our friends at Bethlehem Inn.
A quick stop at Starbucks for some personal provisions, and then we were off to the Inn.
Our outing was capped off with a trip to see the new Spiderman movie. One of the gifts of being a grandma is seeing movies I’d never choose to see myself–and enjoying myself immensely.
The second day of celebrating Jesus’ birth was full of joy. Jesus’ love shared. Given and received.
House of Grace 