I always look forward to Christmas with great anticipation, but I have never anticipated the Christmas season for such a long time as I have this year. In mid-January I returned home from a Christmas visit with our officer daughter, husband and family to find a voice mail awaiting me from the corps officer in Wiarton, Ont. She asked if I would be willing to participate in a reading of A Christmas Carol which was being organized in a nearby town in December as a fundraiser to support the work of local food banks in their effort to make Christmas cheerier for those struggling to make ends meet.

Would I be willing? I jumped at the chance! This would be a first for me. And the marvellous story by Charles Dickens is my all time Christmas favourite. Sure, other great stories which I also love have come along since; stories like Miracle on 34th Street, It's a Wonderful Life and The Christmas Shoes, but none has usurped this story, and particularly the masterful presentation of Scrooge by Alistair Simm, in the film version, which I first saw as a little girl. (I see that Disney has produced an animated version this year, but I will be staying with the old one, thank you very much!)

I visited the local library and discovered, to my joy, that they had a read-aloud version that Charles Dickens himself had abridged from the original, and promptly reserved it for the two weeks around the performance date. The librarian was very surprised, but became almost as excited as me, when I told her the reason why!
The project then went on the back burner until September when the organizer of the event began to phone me for information to help with publicizing the reading, and for other related details. Because the full title of book is: A Christmas Carol In Prose Being A Ghost Story of Christmas, and carols are usually sung, it is divided it into staves rather than chapters, and it will be my privilege to read the last stave, the concluding words of which are: “It was always said of him (Scrooge), that he knew how to keep Christmas well, if any man alive possessed the knowledge. May that be truly said of us! And so, as Tiny Tim observed, God Bless Us, Every One!”

As the date draws ever closer I continue to be filled with excitement, but now there are other also emotions vying within me. I have just finished reading Stop the Traffik by Steve Chalke, (with a chapter by Cherie Blair), which not only draws attention to the fact that there are now more slaves in the world than when the slave trade was abolished 200 years ago, but also points to the underlying reason that makes so many people vulnerable – poverty; the same reason that has prompted this reading of A Christmas Carol. As I read the book, words of Scrooge spoken earlier in A Christmas Carol were echoing in my ears: “Are there no prisons? And the Union workhouses? Are they not still in operation? The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” They were his answer to a gentleman who had come on Christmas Eve to seek from him a donation to buy food and drink for the poor at a time when “Want is keenly felt.”

And I found myself sighing and asking: “Has anything changed for the better since A Christmas Carol was written, or do we enjoy the story and then continue our lives as before, unmindful of all the injustices in the world?”

But in preparing this blog God has come to me with fresh hope, for I recall that God's Christmas story, the original Christmas Carol, is one that we find on the lips of Jesus, whose birth we celebrate at Christ-Mass. He is quoting an old song found in the prophecy of Isaiah: 61, 1,2a, which was to find its fulfilment in his person:

“God's Spirit is on me; he's chosen me to preach the message of good news to the poor, Sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, To set the burdened and battered free, to announce, 'This is God's year to act!'” (Luke 4: 18, 19 The Message)

And I know that this is no Ghost Story – and that it's a story that isn't finished yet – for we are living between the now and the not yet when God will have the last word:

“I saw Heaven and earth new-created. I heard a voice thunder….'Look! God has moved into the neighbourhood, making his home with men and women! He'll wipe every tear from their eyes…..I'm A to Z. I'm the Beginning, I'm the Conclusion. (Selected phrases from Rev. 21: 1 – 6)

And, as a result of all this reading and reflecting, I am prompted to pray, during this season of Advent:
Lord, I have discovered afresh the power of story. But wonderful as A Christmas Carol is, I know that your own Christmas story is even more wonderful.

Help me to see how those two stories not only inter-connect with each other, but inter-connect with my story, too.

As I remember that Jesus' birth was in such lowly circumstances, because there was no room for him in the inn, I ask that you will show me new ways in which I can help the outcasts of society, today.

As I remember how Jesus identified with the poor, help me to do what I can, where I can, to alleviate poverty.

And as Charles Dickens used such a creative means to name the injustices of his day, help me to be equally creative in the responses I make to the many injustices of which I am aware.

Please help me to recognize your presence with me as I draw closer to the celebration of Jesus' birth. Help me to anticipate Christmas Day 2009 with expectation and joy, as I prepare myself to receive afresh Jesus – your gift beyond words.

Will you make this your prayer, too?

Colonel Gwenyth Redhead is a retired Salvation Army officer. She and her husband, Robert, have held a wide variety of appointments in the United Kingdom, Canada and New Zealand. However, her passion has always been to encourage others in creative responses to God through writing of scripts, stories, articles and lyrics (mostly to Robert's music). She has two daughters, Joanne and Corinne, and rejoices that they, too, use the creativity God has given them in ministry.