Tis the season for Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, and the plethora of movie and TV takes on it. My favourites include Scrooged with Bill Murray, The Muppets Christmas Carol (love the music), and the Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (this takes the reverse approach where Scrooge starts nice and ends mean). I love the classic line from this story, “God bless us, everyone,” but what does this really mean? How can God bless us? God’s supposed to love everyone equally, which means He can’t manipulate results because that would show favoritism. Thus, He can’t rig lotteries, make you have a hit single over someone else, or purposely make someone have a bad game so your team will win a championship. So how does God bless us? To bless someone, He might put a caring thought in that someone’s mind or put an idea into another person’s mind like “You should help that person,” “You should give money to that person,” or “You should say hi to that person sitting alone.” More practically, God also blesses people by telling His followers to be a people of love: “Love your neighbor as yourself,” (Lev 19:18, Luke 10:27b), which means followers should be looking for ways to bless those around them. Ultimately, for God to bless someone, he typically has to use people (and sometimes pets). For this statement to ring true, for God to bless everyone, we need to be ready to be the blessing. Thus, what we’re really saying when we say “God bless us everyone,” is “Let’s be nice to each other.”
**I will be spending the next year putting together stories of people who are a blessing to those around them for my new book, The Good Samaritans: Stories of People Making a Difference, which will be based on this question: When has someone touched your heart by doing something surprisingly kind? If you have a story that you think would be a good addition to this book, please let me know (rev.chad.david@gmail.com). It’s time we started to acknowledge the blessings that go on around us.
**My second challenge to you this week is to give yourself the Charles Dickens’ test. If you were visited by the three ghosts, what would you be seeing?
- Ghost of Christmas Past: What was your life like when you were 5, 10 and 15?
- Ghost of Christmas Present: How are you currently living? Are you more of a help to others or a hindrance?
- Ghost of Christmas Future: Consider where your current path will take you with a worst case scenario, a best case scenario and a likely case scenario.
The reality is that many of us aren’t living like Scrooge does the beginning or the ending of the story. We’re neither that good nor that bad. We’re somewhere in the middle, which means many of us are actually hurting those around us because we simply ignore the needs. We don’t push ourselves to say hi to someone who looks lonely; we don’t donate to charities because we overspend on ourselves and have too much debt; we don’t volunteer because we’re too busy; we don’t call a friend to say hi because we’re too focused on ourselves. For many of us the Ghost of Christmas Present is really just going to show us a very average, boring life that isn’t making much of a difference because we’re living the typical Western life, which is overly busy, financially stretched, unappreciative, with problems of negativity, workaholism and comfortaholism (avoids challenges and struggles). Please know, I don’t say this out of judgement, but out of a fear that my own life isn’t having the impact it could. My Ghost of Christmas Present isn’t overly impressed either.
Fortunately, as John Lennon sang, there is hope: “So this is Xmas/ And what have you done/ Another year over/ And a new one just begun.” We’re not doomed to live a life that’s blah; we have the choice to change. We have the choice to be the blessing to those around us. This year, will you be the blessing you have the potential to be?
God bless us, everyone.
Rev. Chad David, www.ChadDavid.ca, Learning to love dumb people