'Tis the season for giving

 

Jesus is not the only person who was born on December 25.

 

My uncle George was also born on Christmas day, but I did not realize until later in life how religious he was. As a result, both of his sons went to a Catholic high school, and for many years, he went to mass almost every day.

Another person who was born on December 25 (1970) was a Lutheran pastor named Daniel Ruen, who was the pastor of Grace Lutheran church in Evanston, Illinois when I lived in Evanston. After serving as the pastor there for 14 years, he moved to St. Anthony Park Lutheran church in St. Paul, Minnesota. By a strange coincidence, the church is located at 2323 Como Avenue, less than 2 miles from our first house at 1367 Asbury.

https://www.saplc.org/staff

 

After I moved to Evanston in 2005, I discovered that there were roughly 100 churches in town, and the thought occurred to me that it would be interesting to visit as many of them as I could. Since I always worked on Friday evenings, I never got to the synagogues or mosques in town, but I DID get to more than 60 other churches before I ran out of energy. Generally speaking, I normally did not return for a second visit for most of them, but the one exception was Grace Lutheran, partially because it was a short bike ride away, and partially because I liked the paster.

https://www.churchfinder.com/churches/il/evanston

 One of his innovations was “beer and Bible" night. I never attended, but we DID have a couple of beers together at one of the local pubs once on a Saturday afternoon.

What also attracted me to the church is that it was definitely a “liberal” church. In addition to the fact that social justice was a concern, it was also a welcoming community to the LGBT+ community.

One example of the social justice aspect was the fact that a number of people from the church (including me) traveled to Springfield on at least one occasion to highlight the challenges facing family members of people who were incarcerated. The trip is detailed in my story titled “Monopoly and Lincoln Logs”.

https://tohell-andback.blogspot.com/2011/05/monopoly-and-lincoln-logs.html

(If you look closely at the picture, you can see me in the background)

Another example of social justice is listed below:

One of the members of Grace Lutheran church was a man named Danny Brown. Shortly after I started going to Grace on a regular basis, Mr. Brown discovered that he needed a kidney transplant, so he appealed to the church to help him find a donor, and they did.

The search was successful. As it turns out, the person who was the best fit was the pastor, Daniel Ruen. He bravely went through the surgery, and both he and Danny Brown are still very much alive today.

Many of us (including me) would be reluctant to donate one of our organs. The truth is, though, organ donors actually benefit physically for doing to. However, if you read that link below, there are MANY benefits for both the donor and the recipient.

https://www.americantransplantfoundation.org/about-transplant/living-donation/about-living-donation/#:~:text=Often%2C%20transplanted%20organs%20from%20living%20donors%20have%20greater,and%20candidates%20may%20lessen%20the%20risk%20of%20rejection.

Both Sharon and I are listed as organ donors on our drivers’ licenses.

After Sharon’s sister died in 2020, many of her organs lived on in other people – and the hospital provided a list of which ones how that were going to be used.

Donating part of you body is certainly on the strong end of the act of giving, but we don’t have to go that far.

Be as generous as you can to the various charities that are always asking for money, but above all do this:

 

Be kind.