What do we say when someone is down about Christmas? Don’t we call them a Scrooge or a Grinch?
Dr. Seuss has the Grinch as an altogether miserable fellow.
It could be his head wasn’t screwed on just right.
It could be, perhaps, that his shoes were too tight.
But I think that the most likely reason of all
May have been that his heart was two sizes too small.
You have heard the saying “Misery loves company”? Well the Grinch doesn’t even have company except for his dog Max. The Gospels say that we should rejoice with other’s happiness, we should assist those in need and we should support people in their sorrow. We have to ask ourselves if at times we don’t follow the Grinch path instead of the one that the Gospel lays out. If we can’t win, we don’t want anyone to win. If we can’t have what we want, we choose nothing at all and very rarely let others have what we really desire.
Christmas is a time to tune into God. In tuning into God we can confront our feelings, emotions, and our actions to know what our motives are. We can with God’s help change our ways. In scripture we come across many people that have changed their lives. In James Kemp’s book “The Gospel According to Dr. Seuss”, he parallels Zacchaeus with the Grinch. Zacchaeus needed someone to love him. Jesus was just the person but no one around really agreed at the time that Jesus asked him to come down from the tree. If we are to follow Jesus we have to learn to recognize and to love people like the Grinch who are miserable and difficult to love because they are in so much pain.
The Grinch thought he took everything away from the Whos down in Whoville. He took their food, their presents, their decorations but the Grinch is the one changed by this experience.
And what happened them…
Well in Whoville they say
That the Grinch’s small heart
Grew three sizes that day!
Christmas is about the change of heart. Only Jesus can do that. Everyone knows a Grinch. Not everyone knows Jesus Christ in their heart and not just their head. Everyone who know Jesus as Lord and Savior can reach out by faith. You may not see a change but you might. Christmas is about making the ordinary extraordinary. We are the ones that need to share the news of Jesus being born and coming to live our lives. That is what will change people and it will change us.
The Grinch had it all wrong and so do we sometimes. We have bought into the materialistic lifestyle and find ourselves defined by what we have and own and we think that the more we have the happier and more fulfilled we will be. Money can’t buy happiness but we sure try. We have left our front porch which has caused us to leave community. We as a church are a community and we have something here that we need to share with the world. We pray each time we pray the Lord’s prayer “give us this day our daily bread”. The Grinch even stole the Who’s daily bread but it was the Grinch who listened for crying and wailing that got the surprise – there was the joy in Whoville just as it always had been.
“Maybe Christmas “, he thought “doesn’t come from a store.
Maybe Christmas.. perhaps.. means a little bit more!”
