In defense of God's Providence!

OH! The Wall Street Journal gave me much fuel for prayer for our blinded rich society. We are blessed with so much tangible and so little spiritual. I am grateful for the musings of a blind soul seeking the real message of Christmas in the pile of sentiment that is heaped upon us in the season. We are expected to enter in, mindless or spiritless and let sentiment lead us to the "Christmas Fare". It will come upon you, they tell us. One moment you have no Christmas Spirit and then, it zaps you. Does it? Did it zap Dickens, to write such a telling story as a Christmas Carol?

I love Dickens. I think the Holy Spirit moved him to write it, so that makes me bias in my debate of such a subject, nevertheless I retort.

It is true that the miserly and the extravagant duke it out in this season. The good steward sheiks and the giving tree advocates throw jabs at each other in this season using the season as a reason for their tackling the extremities. That is not what Dickens was talking about in "Carol". He was individualizing the sentiments for us and tackling them one at a time. Scrooge was certainly in a seared state and unaware of his souls desperate condition. Grief had made him thus. He had lost his true love. He had no family close to keep him attached to sentiment. He had lost his business partner who, at least had agreed with him on the benefit of ignoring the season, which may have brought about heart twinges that were too much to bear.

Giving was the fruit of a spiritual transformation that had taken place. Whose air are you breathing? To whom are you indebted, as the entire community is to your lending practices? God came to him with these questions. The spirits and the ghost of Marley were the truths of the shocking reality that life is certainly brief. He had a chance to see his eternal demise as swiftly approaching and have a change of heart. God arrested his soul and placed him in the shackles of joy, which are no shackles at all, but the greatest liberty in any realm. His griefs had bound him lifelong and were about to wrestle him into eternity in such a state and God, used the prayers of his nation and community and the testimony of a poor, content employee to convict him of his empty estate. "Oh, God, don't let that be me that they are talking about!"Scrooge implored. We all are with him in this ghastly desire. To have no one to mourn your loss, at last is not the worst state.

As we go about our Christmas traditions, please let us remember the physical, financial and spiritual disenfranchised, who live and walk amongst us. Let us remember that the season is joyful to some and is a savor of death to others, in its flagrant, bold truth that Christ is Among Us. He came to seek and to save that which was lost. He came to give us life. I love that no person gave Scrooge the gospel, per say. He was so seared that all that he had heard was calling for judgement upon his soul. Christ's Truth is everywhere about us. His conscience was so saturated that the spiritual warfare was within him. Let us pray for the many in that condition around us.

Grief is no excuse to miss Christ, but it often serves as an excuse to sit sullen in our sad state. Poverty is no excuse, nor is wealth an excuse to miss Christ in Christmas. We who are poor are giving the word of our testimony. That is what Cratchet gave to Scrooge. Who was won, without a word. His fruit of becoming a giver, means that he received the most important lesson that can come at Christmas time. We are the beneficiaries of the eternal life from Jesus and we owe more than we could ever give. God be praised that this truth is still pervasive and was shed light upon by this ancient delightful story of love and eternal life. God give us grace to receive it, in Jesus' name. Amen.