Joy to Your World

Just for the heck of it, I watched the 1999 remake of Charles Dickens’ ‘A Christmas Carol’ with Patrick Steward (aka Jean-Luc Picard) taking on Ebenezer Scrooge. The miserable-est of the miserable.

The ghosts of Christmas past, present and future, showed his miserableness- reflected back in his family and friends.

Scrooge vowed not to leave this world a friendless, bitter man– missed by no one.

He kalmost choked on his first laugh in decades, threw open the curtains to a bright Christmas day, turning back the darkness to light.

The earthly shackles he had been building were broken by his conversion to release of bitterness to acts of kindness and generosity.

Scrooge awoke from his nightmare, threw open the window to the light of Christmas day, and came out, entered a church door, not knowing to remove his hat, but singing Joy to the World, like the shepherds,  “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told them.”  (Luke 2:20)

Ahh what joy and freedom.

Why did Scrooge’s transformation have such an impact this year?

It brought me from the ‘how am I going to get ‘all this’ done’ and -you know what I mean about the ‘all this’ of Christmas.

to reach in a deeper way –whatever way I could– to the despair, pain, sickness, joblessness and financial hardship that is in our faces daily. To check every miserable thought that wants to shift my attention and derail me from my purpose.

All the times I may have missed those opportunities all came back alongside old Ebenezer.

These aren’t usually big, momentous things, but often moments so small they’re easy to miss.

It’s the upside down of God’s economy that the one piece or one class reaching the one person, the one conversation, the one phone call made, the one response or post on Facebook that affirms and supports, the one gift card given. The one coffee bought, the one kind word exchanged with a stranger, the one homeless person with a sign that isn’t ignored.

I’ve been praying to grow a grateful thankful heart, to have eyes to see the ‘ones’ and ‘one time opportunities.’ God is definitely working on me.

Every moment, every day. Isn’t that why we’re still here?

Biblically, Ebenezer means ‘stone of help’ -a response to the Lord delivering the Israelites from the Philistines. He fought the battles and provided the blessings. (2 Samuel 7)

This holiday time is bittersweet and also be a dark time. My heart and love go out to you as joy seems out of reach.

I’m coming back to that stone of help, a reminder that God is continually extending His hand into our ‘thin space’ where He meets us in our darkest times. Light piercing darkness with the good news of exceeding great joy.

And using us, in our small ways to be part of someone’s thin space moment.