This is Day 9 of the 30 Days of Giving: Making Christmas Meaningful campaign, which is designed to bring the Believe.com community creative and practical ways to cheerfully give this holiday season through gifts, relationships and charity. Come visit the 30 Days of Giving Advent Calendar each day in our countdown to Christmas for intriguing and original ways to help you to experience and spread the spirit of joyful giving that God intended throughout the holiday season.
Make a difference this Christmas and help a little one in need of clean water, healthy food, medical care, a safe environment or to hear the Gospel for the very first time. Give to help a child in need by blessing children through charities this Christmas.
The Bible refers to this kind of giving as true religion, and also describes how Jesus values the lives and the innocent, hopeful attitude found in children.
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this: to visit orphans and widows in their affliction, and to keep oneself unstained from the world. —James 1:27
And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.” … “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me …” —Matthew 18:2-5
Use a season of giving, like Christmas, to grow in Christ’s compassion. For parents out there, it can be the perfect way to teach your own children how important it is to give and help others in need by selecting a child to bless. Or, rally the efforts of your entire congregation or company to join in the joy of giving during the holidays.
Organizations like Compassion International, World Vision, Legacy World Missions and Samaritans’ Purse make it easy for you to put your gifts to good use. They all have a steady history of being good stewards of the money they receive. Here’s how each of them use the gifts you give.
This well-established mission offers sponsorship-style giving. You select a child you want to sponsor, and send in the $38 monthly sponsorship fee. In return, you receive letter updates from your sponsored child. Your money goes to provide Christian teaching, food, medical care and important skill training to children in need.
Compassion International works in Africa, Asia, South America, the Caribbean and Central America. You can also send any donation amount to specific areas of need, or choose from their online gift catalog to give items such as clean water, rescue from a dangerous situation or shelter.
This ministry works to transform the lives of impoverished children in more than 100 countries, including the United States. Choose to sponsor an individual child for $35 a month. This provides medical care, protection from harmful environments, clean water, food and education all wrapped up with lessons from the Word of God.
Choose to sponsor a child or to give a gift from their gift catalog. These gifts include a wide range of items in a variety of financial gifts. Choose to give a family chickens or a goat, to provide long-term food and milk options. Partner with your church or corporate organization, and give the money necessary to dig a well to provide fresh water.
This ministry’s mission is to provide help and a safe environment to the orphans and helpless children of Uganda. They use donations to provide food, shelter and education to these young ones who are in an otherwise extremely vulnerable situation open to abuse, disease and hunger.
A ministry of Franklin Graham, the son of well-known evangelist Billy Graham, Samaritans’ Purse provides help in the time of disaster, whether it’s to provide fresh water after a tornado in the states or to help clean up after a Tsunami overseas. If there is a need, this ministry is there.
Operation Christmas Child is one of the biggest outreach missions of the Samaritans’ Purse ministry. Each year, before Christmas, Operation Christmas Child asks people to fill shoe boxes with small gifts to give a child. The shoe boxes are then distributed in more than 130 countries. To date, they have given away more than one million shoe boxes filled with toys, hygiene items and a book that translates the Gospel into the specific language that the child, who receives the shoe box gift, speaks.
No matter how you choose to help and serve God’s little ones this Christmas, it will be a blessing back to you and a gift in the Name of the Father Who gave the ultimate gift of His Son to us.