Having just come through another Christmas season, I heard something that always makes me laugh: when people call someone else a Scrooge or a Grinch. I know what the teasing means. If you’re a Scrooge, you’re cheap, stingy, or grumpy about Christmas. If you’re a Grinch, you’re mean, and trying to ruin others’ fun about the season. Generally, both Scrooge and Grinch are names we use to tell someone that we don’t approve of how they celebrate the holidays, and that they should be more like us, celebrating in the ways we do.
What’s funny about these teases is that both Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch changed by the end of their stories. With a heart three times as large as it had been, the Grinch carved the roast beast with the Whos, and this was said about Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol: “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” So even though both Scrooge and the Grinch are famous for being mean and nasty, that’s not the end of their stories. They didn’t remain, in the words of Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf, cotton-headed ninny muggins.
We like to keep people in boxes, don’t we? We remember people for who they used to be, and what they used to do. You know: “That’s just so-and-so; they’ll never change.” We confine others to our specifications of how they used to act, and how they’ll always act. We pay less attention to whom they have become, and more attention to the stupid things they once did. It’s so unfair, and we despise when people do the same to us, but we continue.
I think of the verse in 2 Corinthians 5:16, that says, “From now on we no longer regard people from a worldly point of view.” The things that used to matter, the people they used to be, the things they used to do… that’s gone now. The next verse says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
I’m not who I used to be, you’re not who you used to be, and that’s a good thing. Jesus brings new beginnings! I’m forgiven, changed, redeemed, renewed, and cleansed. Jesus doesn’t bring up my sins, so I care little if others do. There is freedom in knowing who you are, and whose you are.
Happy New Year!
What’s funny about these teases is that both Ebenezer Scrooge and the Grinch changed by the end of their stories. With a heart three times as large as it had been, the Grinch carved the roast beast with the Whos, and this was said about Scrooge at the end of A Christmas Carol: “It was always said of him, that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge.” So even though both Scrooge and the Grinch are famous for being mean and nasty, that’s not the end of their stories. They didn’t remain, in the words of Will Ferrell’s Buddy the Elf, cotton-headed ninny muggins.
We like to keep people in boxes, don’t we? We remember people for who they used to be, and what they used to do. You know: “That’s just so-and-so; they’ll never change.” We confine others to our specifications of how they used to act, and how they’ll always act. We pay less attention to whom they have become, and more attention to the stupid things they once did. It’s so unfair, and we despise when people do the same to us, but we continue.
I think of the verse in 2 Corinthians 5:16, that says, “From now on we no longer regard people from a worldly point of view.” The things that used to matter, the people they used to be, the things they used to do… that’s gone now. The next verse says, “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come.”
I’m not who I used to be, you’re not who you used to be, and that’s a good thing. Jesus brings new beginnings! I’m forgiven, changed, redeemed, renewed, and cleansed. Jesus doesn’t bring up my sins, so I care little if others do. There is freedom in knowing who you are, and whose you are.
Happy New Year!