You old Scrooge!

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Prayer for the Day presented by Mark Oakley, Dean of Southwark. Good morning. One of the many joys of living in London for me is having so many theatres around. I saw a play a few months ago and it has stayed with me. It was a marvellous production of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. Many of you will know the story centres on Scrooge, a joyless old miser, who Dickens describes as: "Hard and sharp as flint... secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster." Scrooge is visited by three ghosts, those of Christmas past, present and future, and what he sees turns his heart, defrosts it, and recreates him into a generous, loving and happy man. In the production, there is a tender and poignant moment when the Ghost of Christmas Past is showing Scrooge himself as a young boy, and Scrooge sees how lonely, innocent but full of potential he was as a boy. He goes up to the vision of himself and hugs him and says, ‘I don’t want him to become me’. Such moments of self-recognition, though painful, are precious and important. They are full of potential and offer a fresh horizon to a life that has begun to feel stilted. The Christian faith has always taught me that God has given us all a great gift – our being. And we are asked to give one gift back in return for it – our becoming. This new day is waiting for me, for you, to be the person we want to meet. For this to happen, says my faith, just like bread, something will have to break, and something will have to give. I’m praying today that my love will be enlarged, my courage strengthened, and my hope refreshed. May my becoming be blessed with grace and challenge. Amen.