Jesus is the reason...

Its Christmas day today. Mom is at work and Nicole is in Indonesia helping get our friend Grace married. I am, of course, very happy that they can all be together, but wish I could be there too for Carmen's classic reading of the Best Christmas Pageant Ever. Not to mention, Grace's wedding.
In order have both Mom and Nicole here, Christmas happened early for our family. What that means now though is that Christmas day is a time to reflect, to read and just hang out.
On our family's Christmas Mom asked us to say what we appreciated about Jesus since this is when we celebrate him and all. Thinking over all the people I've met on this grand adventure I realized that I appreciate having Jesus as a reason.
I think its interesting to look at my ride with Dave in Alabama compared to my ride with Marisa to Arizona. Dave was an enthusiastic evangelical who really got into telling me all about his spiritual journey and how his spirituality and religious beliefs have come to bear on the political and economic realm. While I found his many of his ideas, especially the political ones, to be a bit off-putting (to put it kindly), I could not deny that this man felt secure in his faith, and found great joy and satisfaction in being able to help me along on my travels. Further more, and more importantly, he seemed to find purpose and fulfillment in his daily work. By actively trying to model Christ's example as he saw it Dave seemed able to turn what I saw as a mundane and boring job into something at least a bit more life giving than it otherwise might have been.
In contrast Marisa seemed to have, in my humble opinion, a potentially invigorating job in which she has the opportunity to make a deep and profound impact on many kids. Her role is to co-lead canoe trips for kids with behavioral issues. These kids have grown up in rough inner-city homes. According to Marisa many of them really have trouble getting along with the rest of the group and the leaders. Over the course of these trips, which are often as long as a month, it seems like there would be many great opportunities to help these kids grow personally and socially and in the end leave with new outlooks on life. My impression, however (and I should note that it is just an impression), was that Marisa was not nearly as excited or motivated by her work with kids who needed help, as Dave was by his work with heating and cooling systems.
Through all of that I can't help but wonder why. Marisa, although ethnically Jewish, seemed to be quite removed from any personal religion or faith and the organization she works for was similarly secular. And so as she spoke of her work it was clear that she does see the importance of helping these kids, although I couldn't help but think that maybe if she, like Dave, was living more some higher power she might be a bit more up beat about it.
And so, as I think about why I do what I do, I want to use this season as a reminder that Jesus is the reason for so much more than just this season.


Also it snowed Christmas Eve and made everything look beautiful. so that was nice  :-)