How do we plan financially for Christmas this year?

Hello, my name is Ron Blue, and I'm 66 years old now, and a grandparent. We have 11 grandkids; we have five children, all of whom are married, and 11 grandkids. And you know Judy and I have arrived at this point in life and there's really not a lot that we need. In fact, there's really nothing that we really need. God has provided for us abundantly.

Several years ago when we were thinking about our kids buying something for us for Christmas or our grandkids buying us for Christmas, we wondered what are they going to buy? And we came to the conclusion that they might enjoy the process of buying, but there was really nothing that we needed, so what are we going to do about it?

Judy, my wife, came up with (I think) a brilliant idea. She said, "Why don't we give each of our grandkids a sum of money?" And it happened to be, in our particular case, $100 to each grandkid. Then, we said, "Your gift to us, your grandparents, this year is to give away that $100 and then tell us where you gave it and what it meant to you.” You know, the parents tell us that the kids absolutely responded valiantly. They loved the process of deciding where they were going to give this money.

My daughter, Karen, has three children, and two of them decided to give their money to a Compassion child. It was the maximum amount they could give to a Compassion child, and so they gave that as a Christmas gift. After receiving the gift, the child wrote back and said, "This is what I bought for my parents…things that they needed, necessities of life."  Well, you don't think that had an impact on our grandkids, and an impact on their grandparents?

We've gotten tremendous response from our grandkids, as they've told us how they've given, and we didn't set any really boundaries on the giving. It could be given to an individual, it could be given to a ministry, it could be given to their school--wherever it was that they wanted to give.

I think probably Judy and I get as much joy out of hearing those stories as we do anything, any gift that we have ever received in our life. And, hopefully, what it's teaching the grandkids is that, "It is more blessed to give than to receive" (Acts 20:35). And they see the fruits of that.
That's an idea for you perhaps as maybe grandparents for this Christmas -- or a future Christmas.


Click here for the December 11, 2008 Blog Entry