Dickens and The Gospel Of Jesus Christ

 
 I had promised a Christmas blog to follow at some point this month and here we are already on December 24th. 
I am certain you ALL have much higher things to attend to this evening as well as tomorrow but still maybe a few of you will catch this message before it all passes away for another year…

 I recently, while in Mexico took in the new Jim Carrey “Scrooge” movie and upon exiting the theatre I was illuminated with words that went beyond a simple story of some old cranky Englishman and felt compelled to write them in an entry. The following are those written words.
 
    May we come to know and Love the Lord Jesus, remember that he is no baby in a manger    and may we seek His Spirit well beyond the shopping season of december 2009.

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   Scrooge is the story of a man’s heart. Of every mans heart. An annually visited journey of vicarious salvation. Where a man might learn the darkest parts of his heart and meet grace.

  It’s a story we can celebrate because inside of us all we long it become our own. Its a story of repentance, truly it’s a story of re-birth. Not a changed man but a new man!
We delight in the release of self…. the freedom and the joy that now flows from this new creation.  Blessed, and made new by the refining night gone by. It was not Scrooge’s “effort” that made any inner difference whatsoever, and certainly it was by no personal righteous merit that he should be given any such intervention! He was not deserving…at all                                                          
                                                            1st Timothy 1:15,16
Here is a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners-of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe on him and receive eternal life.

 But how sad for us that this owned longing is scarcely personally considered, and like an unfound fortune, it passes silently through our lives once a year as something merely “seasonal”  than as something deeply human and we fail to see ourselves or this great Gospel expression.
 
Was this Dickens intent?? I do not know, but certainly a piece of every heart could have inspired this story. From that place deep inside the soul which will (and does) endlessly seek reconciliation…perhaps, like Scrooge, in money. Perhaps not. Maybe something else. 
 
I think we shall revisit it in some form or another as long as we are estranged from its archetype. This Christmas is about Grace come down from heaven and how that Grace, in the fullness of Jesus Christ, can make us completely new.
Its not about a religious system, or a building or a tradition. It is about God with us, that we might be saved.
                                                        2nd Corinthians 8:9
 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sakes he became poor, so that you through his poverty might become rich. 
                                                      2nd Corinthians 5:21
God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.