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Reflection for December 24, 2006

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Something to think about on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Eve Ebenezer Scrooge passed through a yard so dark he had to grope his way to the gateway of his house. Nobody else lived in the gloomy building, but that was fine with Scrooge who as Dickens says preferred "to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance." Having reached his sitting room, he first made sure nobody was under the table or sofa and, having locked himself in, he sat down before his fireplace to sip his gruel. Now you all know Scrooge to have been a mean old man whom Dickens described as a squeezing, wrenching, scraping old sinner, as "hard as flint and solitary as an oyster", a walking refrigerator. His only interests in life were "cash boxes, keys, padlocks, ledgers, deeds, and heavy purses wrought in steel" - the very items that made up the chain his deceased partner, Jacob Marley, dragged behind him in his afterlife.

But notice the fireplace where Scrooge is seated spooning his gruel. It's an old Dutch fireplace upon which quaint tiles had been placed, "designed to illustrate the Scriptures. There were Cains and Abels, Pharaoh's daughters, Queens of Sheba, Angelic messengers, Abrahams, Belshazzars, Apostles putting off to sea in butter boats, hundreds of figures to attract his thoughts." Yet he noticed none of them.

What a commentary upon our own modern world! Here we sit, heirs to a great biblical tradition written in an attractive arrangement of story and poetry, offering us a profound understanding of who we are and whence we came and of our wonderful destiny - and yet we value that tradition less and less. Economics, power politics, diversions preoccupy us and is it any wonder that we are reduced to our sitting before a very low fire indeed and limited to gruel for sustenance - like Scrooge?

But don't despair, for even if the tiles of our biblical heritage fail to attract us, God may approach us in other ways - in a kind of pincers movement from above and from below. First of all, as Scrooge "threw his head back in his chair, his glance happened to rest upon a bell, a disused bell, that hung in the room, and communicated for some purpose with a chamber in the highest story of the building. It was with great astonishment and with a strange, inexplicable dread, that as he looked, he saw the bell begin to swing. It swung so softly in the outset that it scarcely made a sound, but soon it rang out loudly, and so did every bell in the house." Talk about a chill! Talk about Jingle Bells! Talk about bells as the ancient voice of God! Scrooge couldn't help but begin to snap out of his moral paralysis.

Yet while his eyes were focused upward, his ears also picked up something ascending from below, for God comes at us from all directions. From the building's cellar there came a clanging noise followed by footsteps on the stairs! Then in came Marley's ghost as a messenger from the realm of God. Well you know the rest. Scrooge couldn't resist such an assault; he was forced to give more serious consideration to his past, present and future. He woke on Christmas Day a changed man, alive with Gospel grace and compassion. His exclamation upon that sunny dawn - "I 'm quite a baby!" - is evidence enough that he felt reborn.

So where do you stand? Preoccupied with business, nourished by gruel, chilled, have you begun to notice that Dutch tile fireplace (your heritage) that confronts you? Have you noticed any bells ringing from above or footsteps approaching you from the cellar of your being? That could be God coming to reclaim your attention, your life - to make you break out in laughter as Scrooge did in the end - his being a "most illustrious laugh. The father of a long, long line of brilliant laughs!"

-- Geoff Wood