how do we spend less?

How do we spend less this Christmas season?  

Wrong question, ask again...  

Why do we spend so much in the first place?  

Two reasons (for me anyway):  

1) I'm discontent with what I have. (There's always something cooler or faster or better or bigger available that I can justify wanting. That's what commercials are about.) While my bank account might say I'm broke, I haven't needed water or food or shelter or clothes any time ever...the stuff that I don't have is just stuff I want, not stuff I need.  

2) It's easier. (Buying you a sweater or an iTunes gift card is easier, than doing or giving something that points you at Jesus, giving money is easier than giving time, writing a check is easier than actually caring, celebrating the real meaning of Christmas is harder than getting caught up in what Christmas has become.)  

worship fully. 

spend less. 

give more.  

love all.  

P.S. in effort to fully disclose, these ideas are not original with me. I just listened to the living hope podcast from Sunday. I owe Gib for the inspiration. If you want the rest of the story, go listen to the podcast lhchurch.com

do you really need that?

Maybe being broke is making me cynical, but do you really need that? Do you realize there are people that have nothing and you made a Christmas Tree out of twenty-seven 42" LCD TVs? Is that really celebrating anything? Signs of excess this season are just more apparent to me for some reason.

worship fully.
spend less.
give more.
love all.

adventconspiracy.org

how do i do this again?

I read a lot of blogs. 

It goes something like this:

• pull macbook pro out of bag
• drop macbook pro into docking station
• hit power button
• open refrigerator
• get dew
• sit down
• open dew
• start vmware
• wait for windows to boot (geeks need windows too)
• open safari
• click google reader link
• read as many blog posts as possible while windows boots and outlook connects
• say to myself "self, you could write that better than he did"
• continue with rest of day (that's another post for another day, but it includes more blog reading trust me)
• never actually get around to writing anything

I like to think that there's a lot of good ideas in here somewhere just waiting for me to put out there. Maybe not, but there's at least a couple of semi-entertaining top ten lists and maybe a few rants. So we will start there...

Tomorrow...