Saturday, December 5, 2015

Good, Better, and Best, focusing on the real meaning of Christmas in our families.

The last few weeks in one of my classes I'm taking we've been talking about our responsibilities towards our children. I was able to review an article about good, better,and best things by Elder Dallin H. Oaks. What's been on my mind for this post is to write about doing the best things as a family for Christmas time. I also hope to do a better job this time of incorporating a few more media elements to enrich this blog post.

I talked about this idea with my wife and had the following dialogue:
My Wife:  I've been thinking about that a lot. I put a quote on Facebook:

 We find the real joy of Christmas when 
we make the Savior the focus of the season

Even in gift giving if I can try to be more serviceable, that's better than giving gifts.

Me: It depends because sometimes the way to reach someone is through gifts, especially if it's their love language. (We also spent time talking about the Chapman's five love languages in class as well, mine is Quality Time and so is my wife's).

I think that the gift giving goes too far, when you're not focusing on the real needs of people, and just getting them something even if they don't kneed it.

My Wife: I think things that help people to come unto Christ is what's best. The people that influenced my life the most has been those who have helped bring me unto God. It's not so much the gifts, but the time and the effort and the fact that they care.

Me: I think of President Monson, he told a story of a family that was coming in as refugees from Germany. Their brother had secured for them an apartment, however, it was a stripped down cold apartment with no furniture. This family was coming with absolutely nothing. President Monson (at the time Bishop Monson) couldn't stand the thought of them being in that apartment on Christmas eve. The ward council decided they would do something about it and that Christmas they fixed up the electrical, provided furniture, painted the room, stocked it with food. The whole ward pulled together to make that apartment a beautiful place. To me this was one of the best things that could be done with their time.  I've included the story below (this is a clip from the full biography of President Monson you can find here)



This story reminds my wife and I of the refugees from Syria. This Christmas season we've been trying to think what more we can do as a family to help the refugees. We've contacted the Utah center for refugees in some refugees into our home, however, this Christmas time we have some family members who are struggling and we may need to take them in as our 'refugees'.  The question is how do we make our service something we do as a family rather than something we do as just my wife and I.  Our desires are in whatever act of service, we do something that brings people unto Christ.

However, it's a challenge for people to come unto Christ if their temporal needs (not their wants) but their needs are not being met. When you meet their needs in a Christlike manner we believe that it brings them unto Christ.

In our society we get so caught up on giving gifts and consumerism that we forget that sometimes the true needs are a caring friend, a listening ear, or a loving heart. My children hear about all the gift giving and they beg us for presents. Yet, they soon forget those things when I just play with them and spend time with them. As I think about this topic I think about this video where the son ends up trying to 'buy' some of his dad's time.



Really what my children need for Christmas is my time, and not just fun time, but time that helps them remember their Savior and their need to help their fellow man. I truly believe that this is the best thing that I can be doing for them.  If all I'm doing is working to get ahead to save up for college to provide the luxuries of life for my children I think I'm doing something good, but I'm missing the point.

Obviously if my kids don't even have food or shelter, or clothing (their needs, not their wants), I should do all within my power to make sure this is being met. However, once those basic essentials are met (and those in my opinion are far lower, than what society would say is essential), the best thing I can do is to be with them and show them by example how to become a disciple of Jesus Christ and a productive member of society.

Yet, how easy it is to fall into the consumption track when we conflate our desires with our needs.  For us our consumerism challenge is the purchase of education products. We love to read and we often times find ourselves spending money on books and computer education products because we feel like it will be a good thing for our children.  Yet, when we look at things over time we realize that we didn't really need those products as we rarely if ever used them.  I suppose my point is how easy it is to fall into the trap of sacrificing our best things for something that is better or just merely good.  It's a danger that we all have to watch out for and keep making adjustments to make this better.

So to my readers, how have you avoided traps of consumerism and focused on the 'better' and 'best' things in your family?


No comments:

Post a Comment