Spend Less

During the Advent season, I'm reflecting on four values with you in this newsletter column. They come from the "Advent Conspiracy" material we are studying in the Creed Young Adult Sunday school class.
Worship Fully
Spend Less
Give More
Love All
Last week I wrote about worshipping fully. This week is one of the harder ones...spend less. One would think that during this period of economic struggle in the country spending less would be easier. I'm curious to see if we spend the average of 3 billion dollars on Christmas gifts that we have as a nation in recent years.
It seems that we are slowly climbing out of the economic hole we are in right now. Interestingly one of the pieces of advice we hear to get the economic machine moving again is to spend. Spending gets the economy moving again, businesses profit, many through the economic food chain receive benefit from a spend-heavy Christmas season.
In personal terms, people's jobs stay relevant and therefore they keep their jobs and can support their families. Livelihood is at stake.
So what spiritual reason might we have for spending less this Advent? The authors of Advent Conspiracy suggest that what we spend our money on is sometimes frivolous and even wasteful. Rather than giving fewer presents but meaningful ones, we sometimes give with the thought that more is better. I agree with the authors that more is not always better. Most importantly, spending less allows the opportunity to give more, which I'll write about next week.
In short, the challenging but ultimately rewarding word is that God's economy might be asking of us something different than our economy might be this Christmas. Spending less could be an opportunity to give more of what truly matters. Let's pray together about this as we shop for Christmas this year.