I got caught by the police! Red handed! On Christmas Day! Every year I purchase Starbucks\u2019s Gift Cards, drive around on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day giving them to Police Officers with a quick, \u201cThanks for working on Christmas.\u201d This is done anonymously in the tradition of one of the early versions of Santa Claus, St. Nicholas, a saint who was known for giving anonymous gifts, especially to children during the night as they slept. This idea, of course, was popularized by Clement Moore, who wrote a simple poem for his children in 1822 entitled, \u201cA Visit from St. Nicholas,\u201d that begins with the now famous words, \u201cTwas the night before Christmas . . .\u201d And of course in the spirit of Jesus who told His disciples, \u201cwhen you do a charitable deed, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing\u201d (Matthew 6:3). For the first time, I got caught. One of the recipients apparently recorded my car license tag. My wife was surprised when a Police vehicle pulled up to our front curb and gave her a hand-made note for me. It read, \u201cOf all the gifts bestowed this year . . . the greatest is the appreciation of those like you\u201d and it was signed by nineteen police officers, complete with their badge numbers. I wept. One of my greatest Christmas joys, passed onto me my Father, is the anonymous giving of gifts. This year, I was blessed to be caught on Christmas.<\/p>\n
Join me in praying for the following global concerns:
\n\u2022 In places like Serbia, Christmas is on Jan 7. Pray for the continual witness\/ministry of missionaries around the Christmas season.
\n\u2022 Pray for Mark and Sharon as they continue to serve in the U.K.
\n\u2022 Pray for Matthew, Heather and the boys as they prepare to move to Victoria, B.C., Canada and start a church.
\n\u2022 Pray for the final days of recruitment for the Feb. 9-11 Vancouver Vision Tour. Deadline for registration is Jan 13.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I got caught by the police! Red handed! On Christmas Day! Every year I purchase Starbucks\u2019s Gift Cards, drive around on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day giving them to Police Officers with a quick, \u201cThanks for working on Christmas.\u201d This is done anonymously in the tradition of one of the early versions of Santa Claus,…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-766","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-monday-morning-manna"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/discipleallnations.org\/members\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}