from Ron Rose
December 15, 2008

Preparation

I sat in the audience watching my buddy, Tyler, transform Scrooge into a man with a message—actually into an “everyman” with a message. How timely the message of Dickens’ Christmas Carol is for this culture. Ultimately, Dickens shows us a transformed man, a granddad we all wish we had, and a man we can all become.

Tiny Tim’s closing line is more than a memorable epitaph; it’s a prophecy: “God bless us every one.“ He’s already done it. But it takes faith to experience it. Because of the blessing, we can be more than what we’ve been. We have the power to be transformed, to live beyond our circumstances, to give, to love, to bless in spite of yourselves.

Or, we can refuse the blessing and live in misery, like early Scrooge, squeezed and squirming.

The blessing is not meant to be horded, hidden away. It has to be unwrapped and lived in the present. Only then do we discover the transforming power of uncontainable joy.

Tis the season to show those around us how to live the better version of ourselves. Are your ready?

We are going to discover the joy hidden inside the generous spirit. We are going to unwrap that holy blessing. We are going to love and give and celebrate the wonder of the greatest gift; the power to change before it’s too late.

Regardless of the economic times, the personal struggles, the rejections, the loneliness, we are going to live each day transformed…a better version of ourselves. The Good Book lays it on the line, “Be transformed, by the renewing of your mind.” In other words, get over the past, change the present, and find peace in your future. It’s a gift, but you have to unwrap it.

There is a little Scrooge in all of us. And, it’s not too late to change the future. After all, there is always a need for more love and forgiveness and kindness.

Inspiration

Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1812, but he spent his first ten years in Chatham. Then in 1822 he moved to London, where his parents pretended to lead an upper-class lifestyle. Their four-room home was cramped, creditors called frequently trying to collect payments, but Dickens’ parents continued to party anyway.

Instead of going to school, for twelve hours a day, six days a week, Dickens pasted labels to bottles of shoe polish at the rat-infested, dilapidated Warren’s Blacking factory. He was ridiculed and harassed and shamed by the stigma of working in such filthy, low-class surroundings.

When his father was arrested for nonpayment of a debt, Dickens’ mother and younger siblings moved into prison with his father, leaving the twelve-year-old alone on the outside to continue working. Lonely, scared, and abandoned, Dickens lived in a run-down neighborhood close to the prison so that he could visit his family.

Young Charles never got over the time he spent at Warren’s and his mother’s calloused betrayal.

But, once he experienced the power of the blessing, he used this own experience as a background for the story that revived the spirit of Christmas in all of England.

Dickens put his story inside the Christmas Carol and named himself Scrooge. In the opening stave of A Christmas Carol Dickens describes Ebenezer Scrooge:

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grind-stone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.

External heat and cold had little influence on Scrooge. No warmth could warm, no wintry weather chill him. No wind that blew was bitterer than he.

As the story goes, he had to get unusual heat to warm his cold, hardened heart. However once the promise was made, transformation experienced, a new version of Scrooge was blessed to be a blessing.

Motivation

It’s never too late for change and transformation. God has placed the longing for love and forgiveness in all of us.

He created us with the power to choose. In fact no one can do your choosing for you, it’s up to you.

Then comes the kicker, God really enjoys transforming us, changing us into better people. HE keeps blessing us with the power to live a better version of ourselves.

So look for God’s transforming power in every challenge, every surprise, and every misstep of the season. If he can bless a man like Scrooge, he can bless you and me.

“Softly and tenderly Jesus is calling… come home, come home.”