Knowing God – December 12th issue
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Rev Dale Lee
“Rejoice in the Lord alway(s): and again I say, Rejoice.” (Phil 4:4, KJV)
Depression, that dark spirit of hopelessness and cold heaviness, stalks with ravenous hunger during the Holidays. Many feel the emptiness of the pursuits that have energized them throughout the year. Many turn even more so to alcohol and the beautiful, savior pills. But none can enliven, fortify and rejoice the heart like Jesus. God is all the happiness we can find in this world. Happy is the person who daily revives and rejoices his spirit by praising the Lord.
Maybe you have seen him already this holiday season, Ebenezer Scrooge. If ever a man learned to rejoice in the reclamation of his soul and liberation from depressing darkness, he was Bah Humbug himself. Raised hard, under the harsh and unfair rejection of his father who blamed him for his mother’s death during childbirth, Ebenezer was apparently doomed to a life of rejection and sorrow and anger because of the rejection and sorrow.
Charles Dickens describes his most famous character: “He was a tight-fisted hand on the grindstone Scrooge. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner. Hard and sharp as flint. The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek, stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, his thin lips blue…Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” And Scrooge hated Christmas most of all.
His ice-block soul would be warmed, his dark mind enlightened, his frightening face made pleasant again. God touched his life and he learned to rejoice in the grace of God given to one so undeserving.
This season make the commitment to rejoice in the Lord Jesus, His grace, mercy, goodness and everlasting love. Rejoice in HIM and never be disappointed. Talk to Him of His mighty goodness and selfless condescension in coming to earth to save us. Rejoice daily in the Lord and ignore, to the degree possible, all the foolishness and ugliness that surrounds us.