Every year during the Christmas season people are faced with huge decisions in how to spend their time and money. It is interesting to see how the busyness and normality of the U.S. Christmas culture has seemed to disguise these huge decisions to be necessity rather than choice, and stripped the potential meaning behind each decision and covered it with a drive to wear ourselves out, buy things we can’t afford, and glamorize a season that is intended to be simple and deeply meaningful.

In no way am I against the joy of seeing family and friends, creating opportunities for community and bestowing gifts on people that I love, but I am curious how many of us (myself included) take time to think about why we do these things. Are our motives for our well-being and truly the well-being of others? Or are our motives actually a sub-conscious attempt to prove our worth through how perfect or festive or fun or memorable each thing we do during Christmas appears to other people? Is it really about how much we love people around us and want to create environments of love for others to experience and be invited into? Or will it sound good telling the stories of these things and how we wore ourselves out to please others…or even how much we donated and gave at Christmas?

It is easy to forget what is important when we feel pressure from around every corner to live the Christmas season in a very particular way (even if we think we are doing what is important).

This Christmas more than anything else, I hope that you take time to reflect and spend this season filled with meaning and truth and love and peace and great joy!

And in the midst of your reflection, if you realize that you desire to give something more than what will be forgotten in January, and to make a difference even possibly without anyone hearing about it, LIME invites you to give the gift of compassion this Christmas.

For $25 you can sponsor a Christmas Dinner Box that will be given to a family in need in North Long Beach next Saturday, December 17th. For more information, you can email info@limeworks.org or click here on how to donate.

May your Christmas be filled with the things that question our culture and encourage the truth of this season!

LIME is at a really exciting place! With the new vision in mind and our foundation in place, LIME is happy to announce the very first projects we will be doing and they are both happening in just a few weeks.

Our first project will be partnering with the Long Beach Rescue Mission to serve dinner to some of the homeless and impoverished in the downtown Long Beach area. Before we go to serve, the youth that are helping will spend about an hour learning and reflecting about poverty in our community, and what compassion looks like The group will have about 15 people.

Specifically for Christmas, LIME will be partnering with IC Kidz and Luz y Vida-Norte to assist with their Christmas celebration called, ‘La Posada’. Our role will be funding and distributing Christmas Dinner Boxes to families in need within the community. Each Christmas Dinner Box cost $25 and will feed a family. Our goal is to provide food for 200 families through distributing 200 dinner boxes.

This is where we need your help! If you are interested in purchasing any of our Christmas Dinner Boxes, please send a check made out to LIME and put ‘Christmas Dinner Box’ in the memo. The deadline is December 14th and each box cost $25.

You can mail the check to: 10621 Calle Lee Building 141, Los Alamitos, Ca 90720

Also, we also are inviting youth to join us in helping to distribute these boxes at La Posada on December 17th from 11:00am-4:30pm. We will  begin with a time of getting to know each other and learning at Light & Life Christian Fellowship, 5951 Downey Ave., Long Beach, Ca 90805 and from there walk over to Ramona Park to distribute the boxes. If you know of any youth that may want to participate, please sign up by Thursday, December 15th with Lindsey Walkemeyer-Taylor at lindsey@limeworks.org.

Tis the season to give, and in following the example of Jesus Christ, we want our gift to be one of compassion. Will you join us?

For more information and to download the pdfs with all of the details, go to our current projects page.

46.2 million people in the U.S. are living in poverty.

That is 1 in 7 people.

Of course we must remember and recognize that poverty as defined in the U.S. can still be considered wealth and privilege when comparing it with the realities of poverty in the rest of the world.

However, I do think that in the U.S. because we ascribe poverty mostly (if not always) to other place around the world, we do not realize the great need that is present in our very own country, in our very own local communities.

Urban Ministries of Durham partnered with McKinney, a well-known marketing group also based in Durham, North Carolina to create an interactive, social media based game to bring awareness to the realities that many people in the U.S. face on a day to day basis. The game simulates a real-life situation in which you have 31 days (one month) to survive faced with the pressures of day to day life. To find out more about the actual game, watch this 3 minute video.

Take 5 minutes to try the game out for yourself.

You will probably be surprised at what you learn and experience being placed in the shoes of someone else struggling to make it each month.

Compassion begins with awareness. Take some time to really learn and understand what life is like for numerous people in the U.S.

Take some time to realize that maybe homelessness and poverty really aren’t that far away from anybody.

playspent.org