Sunday Devotion: Bah! Humbug!

Janet Rubin

I’m finally sitting down to read the Dickens’ classic, A Christmas Carol. Of course I’ve seen Albert Finney play Ebenezer forever. I grew up watching Mickey’s Christmas Carol and The Muppet’s Christmas Carol and, more recently, Bill Murry in Scrooged. So I figure it’s high time I get serious and read the book. If you haven’t read it yourself, the first chapter begins with the statement, “Marley was dead.” The first four paragraphs reiterate this point.

“There is no doubt that Marley was dead. This must be distinctly understood, or nothing wonderful can come of the story I am going to relate. If we were not perfectly convinced that Hamlet’s father died before the play began, there would be nothing more remarkable in his taking a stroll at night, in an easterly wind, upon his own ramparts, than there would be in any other middle-aged gentleman rashly turning out after dark in a breezy spot—say Saint Paul’s Churchyard for instance—literally to astonish his son’s weak mind.”

Scrooge’s heart was hard, bitterness encrusted on his soul like years of soot in a chimney. It took something extraordinary to change him—starting with the appearance of his dead friend. Ebenezer was accustomed to people trying to talk sense into him. He never listened. But when the deceased Marley showed up, that got his attention!

In God’s great story—the story of our salvation—there is an equally important point: Jesus Christ was dead. He died on a cross to pay for our sins, then rose again. If He was not dead, His resurrection was a farce and had no power to save us and give us new hearts. If Jesus were only a baby in a manger, not a savior who came to die… we’d be forever lost. He had to give His life in order for us to be saved. When you see the baby in the manger scene, with tender, flailing, infant hands and feet, remember why He came. He came to die. To have those hands and feet pierced, that we may live. That’s what really makes His arrival amazing.

Romans 10:9 If you confess with your mouth 'Jesus is Lord,' and believe in your heart that God raised Him from the dead, you will be saved."

Knowing and accepting this truth about our Lord is what enables us to be made new, given a second chance like Ebenezer. There's nothing to humbug about that!

1 Corinthians 15:3-4 And we know that Christ died for our sins according to the scriptures, and that He was buried and that He rose again the third day according to the scriptures.