At the age of sixteen, I came to personal faith in Jesus Christ.

At the age of seventeen, I became senior class president at Great Valley High School in Malvern, Pennsylvania.

These two facts are related; they are part of my story, which become God’s story—for my new life in Christ, was a life with Christ and for Christ. Let me explain.

What brought me to faith was two months of study of the life of Jesus. In our little small group, comprised of six to eight attendees, we read from the gospels every Sunday afternoon. After a few months, even if you had never heard of Jesus, you could pretty much predict what he would do during an encounter with a leper, hungry people, demon-possessed people, or arrogant spiritual leaders. Jesus, I found, was wonderful and refreshing, and I wanted to live a life like his, or share a life with him, and embody a life that would imitate his life. (I possessed this thought long before I understood the concept of imitatio Christi.)

So, as I considered these things when thinking about myself, I needed first to ask for forgiveness. I understood that the world around me had changed. Even though I held this exalted adolescent position of “senior class president,” I began thinking of how I could use this position to serve others.

I had forgotten about all of this until recently when I began praying for our high school-aged grandchildren one morning. As I remembered my high school experiences—which were typical in both the extremes of joys and anxiety—the overwhelming remembrance was not the senior prom, or homecoming games, or even our glorious soccer season, but the Christmas dinner we sponsored for low-income families in West Chester. How did this come about?

It began when I decided to do something “like Jesus” would do. So, on two Friday nights in the fall of my senior year, our small group sponsored a showing of two Marx Brothers movies each evening: Duck Soup and Horse Feathers. We had an intermission between the two films where you could get a cup of soda and bag of popcorn. Hundreds came each evening, and we even had the good sense to pay for a local law enforcement officer to hang around and keep the order. Great fun. Good money. Lots of laughs!

All this was done to do something “like Jesus” would do and that was to find a way to feed the hungry and care for the poor.

Then we contacted the local social services office in the neighboring town of West Chester. We received a list of families in need and invited them to a Christmas party at the high school cafeteria. In the invitation phone calls, we told the parents that we would play games with the kids, sing Christmas carols, and serve a big Christmas dinner with turkey and all the fixings.

When I think back to my senior year in high school, I find it hard to believe that 17- and 18-year-olds were given permission to use the huge cafeteria ovens, pick up families in our own cars, and drive them to the school, all with only limited “adult” supervision. I remember two teachers sitting at the school as chaperones, but we students did all the work to provide an extravagant meal and enjoyable Christmas celebration for many families who had, until recently, been homeless.

Why in the world did I and a few other recent converts from our Bible study group spend all that time for others?

In a word, it was the Word. As teens who had not been very familiar with the Bible, or with Jesus’ life, as we began reading the Bible we discovered that this is exactly the type of thing Jesus would do: he would reach out to the poor and underprivileged.

I did not have a theology of justice or theology of the poor. I and my small group friends were simply reading from the gospels of Mark and Luke. We read about Jesus to know him and follow him. And so, we looked for how we could use our lives and positions to “be like” Jesus in high school.

To this day, when I think back to my early “Christian Christmas,” I ponder what we as a family might do today to reach out to the poor and needy. Scripture is absolutely clear about the Christian’s calling to care for the foreigner in your land, the widow and the fatherless[1] , the poor and needy.

Christian justice is not complicated; if we stay close to the heart of Jesus, he will show us how to be upright in all of our dealings. In fact, he speaks to children and even high school seniors who can point to the compassion and love of Jesus. Christian spiritual formation should give us the heart of Jesus—a heart of compassion that weeps with those who weep.

“Moved with compassion, Jesus stretched out His hand and touched him and said to him, ‘I am willing; be cleansed’” (Mark 1:41). From the beginning of his ministry and throughout his life of “preaching, teaching, healing and casting out demons,” Jesus was moved with compassion; he suffered with others.

So, I pray: Jesus, may you increase our identity with you, in our feelings, our meditations, our planning, and our actions. May this Advent season be a time of fully living into your life of compassion, of self-sacrifice and love for others. Amen.

[1] God cares about those who need others’ help. Over 80 times he speaks specifically about care for the fatherless.

Dr. Scott W. Sunquist, president of Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, is author of the “Attentiveness” blog. He welcomes comments, responses, and good ideas.