Christmas 2010

Over the Christmas holiday I spent 3 hours in an Apple store working to negotiate a new line to be added on my family plan with AT&T. What a nightmare! AT&T wanted to charge me a $300 deposit for a new line. POLICY they said for new lines. There was no way I was going to pay for that. In fact, even tough they won't care I am switching my Iphone plan to verizon as soon as I can.

What this brought to my attention however, was values that I hold dear. (1) The gift of time is more important than money. I realized that I don't want to spend this kind of time anymore in any store. Apple and AT&T don't deserve my time. I offer my time to people who are important to me. (2) I realized that The Gift Of Friendship is an important value to me. I don't want to waste my time on people who don't care about anything more than "what they can get out of me." Relationship is a sacred trust and a very valuable commodity. It needs to be spent on people who value it. Not people who could care less about us. Andra and I don't mind spending our lives on others but we will not be spending our lives on stupid people who suck the life out of us and only want to use us for their own self-centered purposes. (3) The third value I identified important is "The gift Of hospitality." We love loving, sharing and being together with others. Christmas day for us this year began with not only our family but sharing it with people in our church family also. Heb 13:2 exhorts us to be hospitable. I think if I were to identify another value of mine it would have to be "Generosity." I don't understand people who are not generous. Those who are generous are generous in spirit. Mother Theresa once said, "If you can't feed a hundred, then just feed one." God gives us our time, relationships, hospitality and generousity as gifts - lets use them wisely.