::I decided to put my Christmas letter online. I wrote this letter after receiving two Christmas letters in the mail. One letter was filled with long descriptions of travel and vacation exploits and financial success. Another letter, from missionaries we know, told of simple lives on a very different path. From this contrast my Christmas letter stems.::

Christmas is a season of spending. Our lives are this as well, temporary like seasons. How I spend my money, how I spend my time, how I spend my life — it’s a trade for what I deem important. Every moment, every action, every decision is a choice, a trade in place of something else.

I’ve included some photos from a February trip to Nicaragua, the third such trip I’ve been able to go on. I don’t want to get into the details of all that we do, but instead talk about something that has, through my experiences there, slowly come into an understanding for me and seems highlighted by the strangely un-religious religious holiday of Christmas, which has become devoid of the humility from which it was birthed.

Instead of reflecting back on the year and listing all of my accomplishments and high moments, I wondered, instead, what trades I had made, or how I’d spent my year.

How did I spend my life in 2006? Did I spend other people’s lives without them knowing? How did I spend my time, my money? I can’t even begin to count the moments of self-focus, of selfishness, that I accumulated these past months. These were times of theft, of spending what I thought was mine, what everyone told me was my right to spend, when it was not. I spend and spend in all ways possible, yet am never complete. I feel it.

Jesus spent his life completely. He spent it by coming to earth when heaven was really so much better. He spent it by appearing first to the lowly and shunning riches and power. He spent it with the poor, the sick, those who had needs, those who were not foolish enough to think they were fine on their own. And he finished spending his life on the cross. He is the Good Shepherd, the shepherd who leaves so much to find what seems to be so little.

All the good things that happened to me this year were really not of my doing, and so I take no credit. God continues to spend in my direction though I do not deserve it. It is a debt I cannot repay but know has already been paid. Being able to take part in these trips to Nicaragua is a constant reminder of how spent the world is, yet how God’s accounts never run dry. My encouragement to you would be that, for 2007, spend wisely.

God bless you, and may you choose to make good on His willingness to have your debt repaid in full.