7 Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. 8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. 9 In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. 11 Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us.
What changes us? What warms a cold heart? I ask because I have been watching and rewatching "A Christmas Carol" over the last weeks and discovered something beautiful that I had not seen for the first time.
When Ebenezer Scrooge is mysteriously transported to Christmas Past, the sights and sounds of his youth take him back and a surprising mirth appears on the old miser's face. Next Scrooge sees a his boyhood school where a lone, solitary child sits alone. A tear then runs down Scrooge's stone-hard face. Scrooge sees himself as a child. And we for the first time see that Scrooge has a heart capable of compassion and love -- even if it is compassion and love for his own self. It is then that Scrooge remembers something seemingly small and inconsequential, but monumental in its significance. "There was a boy singing a Christmas Carol at my door last night," Scrooge says, "I should like to have given him something."
Today is Christmas Day. It is the day when the gift of Love came down from God in heaven to us on earth. We can accept this love first by showing more love and more compassion for ourselves. Sad and miserable and even Scrooge-like though we may be, we are nonetheless worthy of the gift of love. God has already decided this. We would do well to accept the gift and begin loving ourselves.
And as we accept the gift and begin loving ourselves, it inevitably dawns on us that there are others too out there who need to be loved and shown compassion -- the same kind of love and compassion that God showed us.
The gift has come. Love is born. And we Scrooges have another chance to give ourselves and others what we should like to have given: love and compassion and kindness and all of what we might imagine a heart full of the Christmas Spirit might bring.
Merry Christmas.
#beLoved #beLight #beOne
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