I’ve just started reading No Greater Love by Mother Teresa.  The book, as a whole, is a very moving discussion on poverty and what it means to truly love your neighbor.  In it, she writes:

We know what poverty means, first of all, to be hungry for bread, to need clothing, and to not have a home.  But there is a far greater kind of poverty.  It means being unwanted, unloved and neglected.  It means having no one to call your own…Abandonment is an awful poverty.  There are lonely people around you…Yet they are all someone’s children.  Someone loved them at one time.  They loved others during their lifetime…The poor do not need our compassion or our pity; they need our help.  What they give to us is more than what we give to them.

During this holiday season, I encourage you to express your thanks to the family and friends who surround you and to find someone with a need you can fulfill.