Dr. Terry Koehn: I Can't Help But Wonder... Things Yet To Be

One of my traditions this time of year is to watch A Christmas Carol. (I especially like the 1938 version featuring Reginald Owen as Scrooge.) Usually, I watch it on Christmas Eve…it just seems to fit, and doing so takes me back to when I would listen to a radio version that used to air repeatedly each Christmas Eve through Christmas Day.

A few years ago, I discovered an intriguing bit of history in relation to this timeless Christmas classic. Written by Charles Dickens and published in 1843, 

A Christmas Carol came into being at the same time in the same city (London) as another historic book, Das Kapital, written by Karl Marx. 

Both Marx and Dickens were responding to the same things they saw around them: unbridled personal greed with little concern for growing social problems as the Industrial Revolution picked up steam. 

Now, my point here is not to make political commentary on capitalism and communism. Rather, as Steven Garber points out (in Visions of Vocation: Common Grace for the Common Good), both books have had an impact on the world. But one has a decidedly more optimistic view of the power of personal transformation to bring about good.

Recall that, upon being visited by the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Be, with its grim images, Scrooge asks, “Are these the shadows of the things that will be, or are they shadows of things that may be only?” In other words, is there room for changing the future?

If the real story of Christmas—the story of God becoming one of us in Jesus—is anything, it is a story full of imagination and wonder about a better future. “The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us,” John writes, “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). The coming of Christ is God’s declaration that our future is not locked in by our past, that even hearts as cold as Scrooge’s can be made new. As the apostle Paul puts it, “If anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” (2 Corinthians 5:17).

But that future is not only “out there” somewhere; it is rooted deeply in each heart and works its way out into the world. Scrooge’s transformed Christmas morning shows up in very ordinary ways: in generosity, in restored relationships, in paying attention to people he had ignored.

I can’t help but wonder, what might transformation from the inside out look like for us? How might a new future be possible through our generosity, our renewed relationships, and our attention to those who are overlooked?

The story of Christmas (and, for that matter, even the story of A Christmas Carol) reminds us that “things that are yet to be” are not fixed. In Christ, God stepped into our world and into our stories, making new futures possible. 

It also is worth asking, who will we become as we welcome the One who came to make all things new?

Keep dreaming God’s dreams!

Pastor Terry