Three Gifts Guaranteed to Give You Christmas Cheer!!! A Repost for 2017…

Editor’s Note: I’ve posted this before, but the Christmas message is renewed every year! Merry Christmas!

Hello World,

I’ve said this before, but I will say it again: Christmas is supposed to be “the most wonderful time of the year!” So if your eyes aren’t twinkling like they are Christmas lights, if jingle bells aren’t attached to your ankles or if you are not burping up eggnog, you obviously don’t possess that sometimes elusive Christmas cheer…

I know that “Jesus is the reason for the season,” but can I be honest? Sometimes even knowing that isn’t enough to dredge up that Christmas cheer that everyone is supposed to be cloaked in like an expensive heavy coat that you only wear on special occasions….

Still despite the manufactured Christmas cheer that retailers will lead you to believe can only be bought, I have discovered there are three gifts, not 12, not enough for your whole family or all your network, simply three that will stoke the furnace of genuine Christmas cheer within you…

I don’t know if it is the example of the three Wise Men or because God is the Father, the Son & the Holy Spirit or at the suggestion of my favorite author Catherine Marshall, but in my 20s, I decided that in addition to the gifts I would give to my friends and family, I would also give three gifts to Jesus…

Now, how does one go about giving gifts to Jesus? Although I feel His presence with me, I have never seen nor touched Him physically…So how was I supposed to do that? I was led to these three verses below as I came up with a way to give three gifts to Jesus…

 In everything I did, I showed you that by this kind of hard work we must help the weak, remembering the words the Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ” Acts 20:35

The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’ Matthew 25:30

But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you. Matthew 6:3-4

So what do these three verses mean?

1. I was give without expectation of receiving anything back.

2. I was to give to people and or organizations that served “the least of these.”

3. I was to give in secret and not tell a soul.

I have never revealed what I have done before, but since I am writing a post about this, let me share some of the gifts I have given over the years as a testimony to how God has blessed me with authentic Christmas cheer as a result….

There was once a homeless man that I saw every day as I walked from one location to another in downtown Atlanta…All of the store owners on the street were kind to him, and I could see why…He was kind and mannerly and even funny sometimes…I don’t don’t why he was homeless, but he seemed content to live on the street…I thought that since he seemed like he wanted to be on the street, I could at least help keep him warm…I tried to figure out what what size pants the man wore and bought him a pair of jeans (he always had on jeans) and a blanket…When I handed him the wrapped up gift, he seemed not to know what I was handing to him until I explained it was a Christmas gift…Then he smiled…That simple smile made me glow on the inside…

Another year, I decided to volunteer one Saturday at My Sister’s House at the Atlanta Mission…I helped hand out supplies to the women and children that were staying at the shelter…At that particular time in my life, I pretty much hated my job and the fact that I was too poor to move out of my parents’ house…But spending just one Saturday at the shelter showed how much I had to be grateful for…My mom has always told me if you want to feel better, forget about yourself…

And finally another one of my secret three gifts was the doll I gave to a Christmas toy drive one year…although I am not a girly girl, I have always LOVED dolls…I wanted a new doll every  Christmas for years and years…in fact, I used to worry that as a fifth grader, someone at school would find out I still played with dolls and I would be teased…So one year I decided to give the prettiest, most girly, luxurious hair-having doll I could find and afford to a toy drive…I don’t know what girl was the recipient of that doll, but if I have learned anything about God, I know that “every good and perfect gift” comes from Him…I’m sure that the girl who received that doll was the very girl that wished for and deserved that gift…

Although the Christmas countdown has begun,  there is more than enough time to give (and get) Christmas cheer…

Any thoughts?

Kim Fields Releases ‘BLESSED LIFE: My Surprising Journey of Joy, Tears, and Tales from Harlem to Hollywood’ – NEW BOOK ALERT!!!

Hello World,

Y’all know I love me some Kim Fields. For the longest time, she was the only little black girl on television in the ’80s! She is #blackgirlmagic before there was a name for all that makes black girls and women special in this world! In fact,  I interviewed Kim Fields previously on After the Altar Call! (Click on the link if you want to check out the interview!) Kim is everywhere again as she recently starred in a “Question of Faith” which was released in September and last Saturday, she starred in “Wrapped Up in Christmas.”

And now Kim Fields has penned a new book “BLESSED LIFE: My Surprising Journey of Joy, Tears, and Tales from Harlem to Hollywood.” Check out a description of the book below:

From “Facts of Life” to “Living Single” to “Dancing with the Stars” to wife and mom, here’s the BLESSED LIFE of Kim Fields, veteran actress, TV personality, and star.

Kim Fields has lived most of her life with people thinking they know her, which is understandable. From her first job on a Mrs. Butterworth syrup commercial at age 7, she has spent 40 years in the public eye. There were 9 years as Dorothy “Tootie” Ramsey on the classic sitcom The Facts of Life, 5 more in her 20s starring as Regine Hunter on the seminal coming-of-age show Living Single, and most recently appearing as herself on Real Housewives of Atlanta and Dancing with the Stars.

Behind the camera, she has directed episodes of Kenan & KelTyler Perry’s Meet the Browns and House of Payne, and BET’s Let’s Stay Together. Between gigs, the pop culture icon’s life has included theater, spoken word, music, speaking engagements, and simply being present to the point that she cannot go a day without someone stopping her to say, “When I was a kid, I wanted to be Tootie” or “You were my role model.”

Flattered and blessed, after four decades in the business, Kim finally understands the role she has played onscreen and off as a successful, outspoken African-American woman. However, for as much as she’s been in the public eye, people have really never known her the way they think they have, and that’s because she, herself, spent most of her life figuring herself out. Now, at age 48, she is ready to set the record straight. She says, “It’s not that I’ve been misunderstood. It’s that I finally feel like I understand me enough to tell the life story that I’ve been asked to write for years.” It will be a chronicle of living, learning, and keen moments of self-discovery as she’s journeyed through the many facets and chapters of life. Fields found faith at age 14 and has found God to be right there every step of the way since then.

According to Radar Online, Kim writes about starring on “The Real Housewives of Atlanta.”

The actress, 48, confessed that she hated being on the Bravo show in her new memoir, Blessed Life, saying that the entire experience was “bizarre.”…The Facts of Life star admitted that she hated filming, saying: “Briefly looking back on the whole season, here’s some of what I discerned: Being myself, sharing my reality in a quasi-real reality can be a bizarre vibe.” She slammed her costars for not being authentic, and claimed that “for much of the filming [she] felt like [she] was in a chess game, constantly ready for and even trying to anticipate the moves of those in front of and behind the camera, while being strategic with [her] own, while staying a few moves ahead in [her] mind.”

To read an excerpt of this book, click HERE!

Below is a video of Kim talking about her book!

I would definitely like to read and or review this book!

Any thoughts?

 

 

See Kim Fields, Jasmine Guy, Tatyana Ali & More Star in Lifetime’s “Wrapped Up in Christmas” on Saturday, Nov. 27!

Hello World,

I hope y’all had a great Thanksgiving with family and friends yesterday! However your year has been, I know that we all have something that we can thank God for, right? And now, it’s the most wonderful time of the year: Christmas!!! One of my favorite ways to celebrate this season is watching Christmas movies! And y’all know that pop culture is never far from my mind as evidenced by the tagline of this blog (blogging the cross section of faith, relationships and pop culture)! On Saturday, a Christmas movie with some of my favorite pop culture icons “Wrapped Up in Christmas” is debuting tomorrow night at 8 p.m. on Lifetime!!!

See the description below:

Christmas is one of Heather’s (Tatyana Ali or Ashley Banks from the “Fresh Prince of Bel Air”) favorite times of year but this year, as the manager of the upscale Town Center Mall, she has to be the Christmas Grinch and cancel the leases of under-performing stores. One afternoon, Heather’s niece, Molly asks the mall Santa to help find a boyfriend for her beloved aunt. Unbeknownst to Molly and Heather, “Santa” is actually Ryan (Brendan Fehr, “Guardians of the Galaxy”), who is working at the mall for the holidays and helping his Aunt Patty run her failing toy store. As Heather and Ryan begin to fall for each other, they have no idea of one another’s true identity: Heather who is tasked with closing his aunt’s store and Ryan who is too ashamed to tell Heather that he is the actually the mall Santa. Will Molly’s Christmas wish come true, or will Heather be stuck as the Town Center Grinch? The film also stars Kim Fields (Régine Hunter from “Living Single”), Jasmine Guy (Whitley Gilbert Wayne from “A Different World”), Joseph Marcell (Geoffrey the butler from “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”), Dan Lauria, Jackée Harry (Lisa Landry from “Sister, Sister”) and Mindy Sterling. “Wrapped Up In Christmas” premieres Saturday, November 25th at 8/7c on Lifetime and is produced by ARO Entertainment. Jeff Schenck executive produces. Peter Sullivan serves as a director from a script by Jennifer Notas Shapiro.

Check out the trailer below:

Any thoughts?