Summer Jones doesn’t know yet what she wants to do with her life. That’s fine—she’s a tenth-grader. If she were really sure what she wanted to do at in her life, she’d probably be wrong. But she does know she’s a lucky young woman.

Summer lives in a pueblo where people care enough about their youth to pay for a number of them to go to Menaul School. She has a couple more years of exploring to do before she even has to decide where to go to college, and Menaul is a great school to do that exploring. And, probably most important, she has a community she loves, that she wants to return to after she has honed some of her gifts into skills that can serve that community. It’s hard to know whether those skills will touch on her love of the outdoors: camping, fishing, hiking, exploring the beautiful wild country of Northern New Mexico. They may involve sports, or reading, or taking care of children.

One thing is clear: Summer wants to take the skills she learns and the gifts she develops at Menaul and later at college back to benefit her pueblo. To a culture that often seems to prize individuality and mobility above all, it may come as a surprise how many students from racial ethnic schools want to serve their native community. Perhaps it is related to some feeling of debt, of owing any success to those who raised you. Perhaps it is simply that they identify any success as a community achievement as much as an individual one. Whatever its causes, these values seem rooted in deeper soil than the individualistic values they bring into contrast. They seem part of the good news of great joy that brought nearby shepherds and distant dignitaries to a stable in Bethlehem: You are not alone. That news is not simply one of the abiding and accompanying love of God in Jesus Christ, though that is cause enough for celebration. It is also a message that sharing this love with one another, caring for each other as we care for ourselves, is both our responsibility and our privilege—it is our path to becoming most fully ourselves.

One of the ways Presbyterians follow that path is through the Christmas Joy Offering. Half of our gifts go to racial ethnic colleges and schools like Menaul to help students find what gifts God is calling them to use, and how. The other half goes to the Assistance Programs of the Board of Pensions to help meet unexpected needs of church workers and their families. Both halves of the Offering are part of the way God’s people model living in community with one another. Today as we contemplate our gifts to the Christmas Joy Offering, let us celebrate this opportunity and give generously.

See the bulletin insert