We Are Not Who We Were

December 16, 2024

I am so excited to start this blog writing about Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Every year, as winter arrives, trees are lit, and carols lifted, I pull out my copy of Dickens’s Ghost Story of Christmas and sweep across its pages once again. Why? Because, as I shared last week, Ebenezer Scrooge’s story is OUR story. It is MY story.

At the beginning of the story, Scrooge is visited by the ghost of his former partner, Jacob Marley who tells him that he will be visited by three spirits. The first spirit comes exactly when promised. The clock strikes one and "light flashed up in the room upon the instant, and the curtains of his bed were drawn." Before Scrooge was…

…a strange figure - like a child: yet not so like a child as like an old man, viewed through some supernatural medium, which gave him the appearance of having receded from the view, and being diminished to a child's proportions. Its hair, which hung about its neck and down its back was white as if with age; and yet the face had not a wrinkle in it, and the tenderest bloom was on the skin.

Scrooge asked, "Are you the Spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?"

"I am," replied the Spirit.

Scrooge then asked why the Spirit was there.

The Spirit replied, "Your welfare...Your reclamation...Take heed!"

I had to look up that word "Reclamation" since many of the film versions change this word to "redemption." Reclamation means "returning something to its former or better state."

The Bible is a tale between two trees. It is a story that begins in a garden centered around the Tree of Life. Sin enters the world, disrupting our intimacy with God, and the Tree of Life is abandoned. God’s story ends in the Holy City, where God gathers His people and where "on each side of the river, [stands] the tree of life." Between the garden of Eden and the Holy City, we experience God's plan of reclamation, working to get us back to the garden, back to Him.

A Christmas Carol is that same story. In this case, the Spirits, working for the reclamation of Ebenezer Scrooge. The Spirits working to get him back to a former and better state, a state where his sin, his chain, is broken, and his heart is filled with the things of God.

The Ghost of Christmas Past reminds Scrooge of the pain his actions caused both him and others, reminds him of what he had missed as a way of setting the stage for him to look forward. Scrooge can choose to allow his mistakes to define him, or he can learn from those moments and seek an alternative future.

We have the same choice in front of us. We can choose to believe we can’t change, that our tomorrows will be no different from our todays and our yesterdays. Or we can accept that our mistakes are a part of our story, but they don't have to be the whole story. We can reframe our past regrets as a small part of a larger story of forgiveness and growth. This Christmas, we can understand, as one author explains, "For us, the birth of the Christ child brings the hope that our past doesn't have to be our present, and that our future is pregnant with the possibilities God has for us." We can choose to claim God’s promise whispered through the prophet, bellowed from the heavens, “I have swept away your offenses like a cloud, your sins like the morning mist. Return to me, for I have redeemed you” (Isaiah 44:22).

We Are Not Who We Were.

The Ghost of Christmas Past showed Scrooge his past, but only for a moment. His purpose was not to hold him in the past, engulfed in a storm of emotions and regret, but to open his heart to desire a different future, a future “pregnant with possibilities.” His purpose was to help Scrooge see his need for a Savior, to lead him to seek God’s forgiveness, and to help him find and accept the One “whose coming was foretold,” who has come for our “welfare” and for our “reclamation.”

The following story has been shared about Pastor A.J. Gordon…

While he was pastor of a church in Boston, he met a young boy in front of the sanctuary carrying a rusty cage in which several birds fluttered nervously.

Gordon inquired, "Son, where did you get those birds?"

The boy replied, "I trapped them out in the field."

"What are you going to do with them?"

"I'm going to play with them, and then I guess I'll just feed them to an old cat we have at home."

When Gordon offered to buy them, the lad exclaimed, "Mister, you don't want them, they're just little old wild birds and can't sing very well."

Gordon replied, "I'll give you $2 for the cage and the birds."

"Okay, it's a deal, but you're making a bad bargain."

The exchange was made, and the boy went away whistling, happy with his shiny

coins. Gordon walked around to the back of the church property, opened the door

of the small wire coop, and let the struggling creatures soar into the blue.

This is what God has done for us. Peter explains, "For you know that it was not with perishable things such as silver or gold that you were redeemed...but with the precious blood of Christ, a lamb without blemish or defect" (I Peter 1:18-19). Paul expounds further, “Christ sacrificed his life's blood to set us free, which means our sins are now forgiven;” therefore, “…whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Ephesians 1:7; Romans 10:13).

We may not be visited by the Ghost of Christmas Past like Ebenezer Scrooge, but if we cry out to Him, God opens “the door of the small wire coop” of our past where we may have found ourselves imprisoned. God invites us to give Him our past, to receive His grace, and to allow Him to write the rest of our story, to FLY into a bright and glorious future, “pregnant with possibilities,” and engulfed in love. It is our choice whether we stay in the cage and remain who we were OR whether we set our sights above and “soar into the blue.”