By Angeline Duran Santiago
Speaking with some friends a while back, someone asked, "Do you think Scrooge really changed?" We shared our ideas based on how the story ends and we all concluded that yes, Scrooge truly comes to repent of his ways so powerfully that the story ends with the proof that he is on the road to being a totally different person. He has had an encounter with present life and soon to be death, putting him in a place where he needs to decide, and do it quickly. Surely being visited in the middle of the night the way Scrooge was would rattle many of us and inspire us to run into the next seconds of our life with a heart that truly hungers for a second chance.
In thinking of Scrooge's own change of heart, I've come to meditate on the condition of my own heart as well as those in my life. So many of us that call ourselves believers and followers of Jesus profess to have come to live for God after surrendering our own hearts to His love and mercy. Our lives had a visit from God's love and somewhere along the transaction of that experience, our hearts were abandoned to His grace, where we chose to declare, "No longer I live, but Christ lives in me." Just like Scrooge, many of us began to run into the next phase of our life trying to prove that God was real in our life, had transformed our broken lives into a life with purpose and we had stepped our of darkness and into His marvelous Light.
Through all of this, we continue to strive to walk and live out our faith knowing we're not perfect, but we're trying to represent the love of God in action through our actions. Desiring to be faithful to the Lord does not exempt us to the realities of this world that we remain in. Just because we have chosen to follow after the Lord, doesn't mean our address changed, our appearance remains pretty much the same, and we sort of remain the same person. We declare that we have put away the old self, just as Scrooge began to do, and we put on the new self created in the Image of Christ.
I've noticed that in keeping a mindset that is dead to sin and alive to Christ, we tend to struggle with keeping the person we were in the grave. Scrooge saw his grave site, his plot and begged to be far away from the captivity of that cold hole in the winter ground. His own miserable heart was as cold as the soil that reached out to keep him. And then I wonder, how many times has this dead self, dead heart, and who we were that is supposed to be dead, really lie dormant? How many of us, including yours truly, go about our daily motions believing we have committed ourselves to the Lord and then when a hardship comes, the old person we left at the foot of the Cross awakens to the hurts and the anger of our moment?
Scrooge would never want to return to those memories that scared him into a change of heart. He chose to honor Christmas, to do good to mankind, and to think of others for always. You and I also promised to live our days doing what is right and honoring the code of the Cross, "to live is Christ, to die is gain." The people around us have a way of resurrecting the old you and the old me by taking us back to that place where we feel hurt by the words we hear, where we feel the hurt in our heart and where we feel the hopelessness and despair all over again if we remain in the company of those who only know how to keep venom in their spit and poison in their heart.
Yes. There will be people and situations to want to discourage you and more so, they'll attempt to resurrect what you've surrendered to the Lord, never to see or experience again. It is then when we must remember the vows we have taken to serve the Lord and why we made such a promise. What has the Lord done in your life that would make you choose to follow Him? Is it so easy to just walk away from the Lord and what He has done in our life? Would Charles Dickens write about Scrooge having a change of heart and saying, "Nah. Humbug! Forget about those three spirits that bothered me all night! The hell with everyone. I'm going back to my way and I don't care about anything or anyone!" Imagine what would happen then? What would be the next scene in this story?
What about your story? My story? Would we go back to a life without God? I don't want that old life. I desire to honor the Lord and live for Him. I want my life to count and have purpose. I want to live as one who has truly been metamorphized when I embraced the cross, my hope in Christ, and my new identity in His promises. May this holiday be a reminder that yes, we remember a Savior that was born a long time ago, but even more, we remember a risen Savior, who would never have risen without experiencing the grave, death, sin, and the pain of this world. He invites us to join Him in that resurrection by finding our game changer at the Cross, allowing our heart to stop beating to the drum of this world, and awaken to the beat of heaven. God invites us to walk with His Son through the grave, hang out at the tomb, see Mary run to and fro announcing the Lord is risen, and join the believers as they watch Jesus rise into heaven. God invites us to hear Jesus promise that we are not alone but that the Holy Spirit will come and comfort us and that we shall never be alone.
That is the hope I want to hold on to. I believe Scrooge found his purpose and we need to find ours. For those of us who decide to let the pages of Scripture be our guide, we too will find our purpose. What better time to discover we are loved by a living God during the holidays. I love Christmas but I don't focus on the manger. I focus on the risen King for that is who is present now to intercede for you and me. It is the Risen Lord who stands at our side when we cannot go on and feel alone. It is the Mighty One of Israel who defends us. Yes, he was a babe in the manger, the Incarnate God, come to save us all. He is all that but He is alive, risen, ready to take your broken heart and heal every part.
#scrooge, #christmas, #christmascarol, #humbug, #deadtoself, #alivetochrist, #riseninchrist, #newheart, #secondchances, #newlife, #Godslove
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