Advent Week Four | On Love
The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come
For reading and reflection: Jeremiah 31:2-4; Luke 1:30-33; John 15:12-17; Matthew 18:2-3; Romans 5:6-8; Philippians 2:5-11
It’s an unlikely pairing, isn’t it? Connecting the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come with love? I confess to being somewhat concerned at the beginning of this Advent journey alongside Scrooge and the Ghosts. How, I wondered, could the most foreboding and death-like of the Ghosts possibly shine the light on Christ’s Advent love?
But then, how could it not?
Unlike the other Ghosts, The Ghost of Christmas Future offers Scrooge no soft entry into the lessons it has to offer him. Instead, it thrusts Scrooge into a face-to-face reckoning with death. Two deaths, actually, of very different kinds.
The first death is his own, though this fact remains vague until the Stave’s end. In this death, Scrooge witnesses again and again the lack of sorrow—even glee—over the ending of his life. Each conversation is marked by the same lovelessness in which Scrooge lived his life: callous indifference, greed, self-justified lawlessness. These, sadly, are the “fruit” which Scrooge produced in his lifetime; the legacy he left behind.
The scene that best exemplifies this is the conversation at the pawn shop. Here, the charwoman (cleaning lady), laundress, and undertaker’s assistant meet unexpectedly to hawk goods they’ve each pilfered from Scrooge’s home, to include the shirt taken off his own dead back:
The parlour was the space behind the screen of rags. The old man raked the fire together with an old stair-rod, and having trimmed his smokey lamp (for it was night), with the stem of his pipe, put it in his mouth again.
While he did this, the woman who had already spoken threw her bundle on the floor and sat down in a flaunting manner on a stool; crossing her elbows on her knees, and looking with a bold defiance at the other two.
“What odds then! What odds, Mrs. Dilber?” said the woman. “Every person has a right to take care of themselves. He always did!”
“That’s true, indeed!” said the laundress. “No man more so.”
“Why then, don’t stand staring as if you was afraid, woman; who’s the wiser? We’re not going to pick holes in each other’s coats, I suppose?”
“No, indeed!” said Mrs. Dilber and the man together. “We should hope not.”
“Very well, then!” cried the woman. “That’s enough Who’s the worse for the loss of a few things like these? Not a dead man, I suppose.”
“No, indeed,” said Mrs. Dilber, laughing.
“If he wanted to keep ‘em after he was dead, a wicked old screw,” pursued the woman, “why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? If he had been, he’d have had somebody to look after him when he was struck with Death, instead of lying gasping out his last there, alone by himself.”
Why wasn’t he natural in his lifetime? the woman declares, as a self-righteous rhetorical question.
We modern readers pause at the word “natural” as it’s used in the sentence. We understand what the woman means: If Scrooge had been more kind, generous, caring, etc. in his lifetime, he would have had more (any) kindness, generosity, caring… showered back upon him at his death.
Isn’t it interesting that the 19th century English definition of the word “natural” (maybe it still does today—my U.K. readers can enlighten me) included these higher order character traits as being fundamental to the human condition? It suggests that being human must—by its nature—include a way of being that reaches out to others: in kindness, generosity, caring… in love. To not express these traits is to be un-human.
Ironically, as the woman is declaring Scrooge an unnatural, dehumanized creature deserving of this inhumane treatment now in his death, she and those with her are acting as callous, dehumanized creatures themselves. Far from treating Scrooge in his death how they wish he would have treated them in his life, they are now justifying their own dehumanized ways and blaming poor, dead, dehumanized Scrooge in the process. “It’s no sin,” says the woman, as she lays her bundle of stolen goods before the pawn broker.
Except, it is.
It is the “second nature” of humans: our sinful nature. We inherited it at the Fall, the day Adam and Eve “took and ate” what was not theirs to eat, and then made excuses for their actions, much in the same way the laundress, cleaning lady, and undertaker’s assistant “took” and made excuses, too. Lest we think we’re somehow different… we’re not.
But it isn’t the way we were made from the beginning. Underneath our “second nature” is our “first nature”. This is the image of God breathed into us “in the beginning.” and restored to us through the Image, Christ Jesus, by his death and resurrection. So that death is not our end, but only our most glorious beginning of living face-to-face eternally with Him.
For God so loved the world that He gave his only Son; that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have everlasting life. —John 3:16
In contrast to the wretchedness of the first death, The Ghost then takes Scrooge to witness a very different kind of death, one marked by that first “natural” state so absent in the first death he was made to see:
The Ghost conducted him through several streets familiar to his feet; and as they went along, Scrooge looked here and there to find himself, but nowhere was he to be seen. They entered poor Bob Cratchit’s house; the dwelling he had visited before; and found the mother and the children seated round the fire.
Quiet. Very quiet. They noisy little Cratchits were as still as statues in one corner, and sat looking up at Peter, who had a book before him. The mother and her daughters were engaged in sewing. But surely they were very quiet!
“‘And He took a child, and set him in the midst of them.’”
Where had Scrooge heard those words? He had not dreamed them. The boy must have read them out, as he and the Spirit crossed the threshold. Why did he not go on?
“The colour hurts my eyes,” she said.
The colour? Ah, poor Tiny Tim!
Tiny Tim is dead. Bob comes home from visiting the graveyard. The family sits by the fire. Their hearts are broken. Their grief is palpable. But, even in their deep sorrow and indescribable loss, they carry on in conversation full of generosity of spirit, hopefulness, and love.
“But however and whenever we part from one another, I am sure we shall none of us forget poor Tiny Tim—shall we—or this first parting that there was among us?”
“Never, father!” cried they all.
“And I know,” said Bob, “I know, my dears, that when we recollect how patient and how mild he was; although he was a little, little child; we shall not quarrel easily among ourselves, and forget poor Tiny Tim in doing it.”
“No, never, father!” they all cried again.
“I am very happy,” said little Bob, “I am very happy!”
Mrs. Cratchit kissed him, his daughters kissed him, the two young Cratchits kissed him, and Peter and himself shook hands. Spirit of Tiny Tim, thy childish essence was from God!
Just as Scrooge’s “unnatural” life rippled out from itself a kind of dead fruit, or “dehumanizing spirit,” so Tiny Tim’s life, whose “essence was from God,” poured out the Spirit of Love even in his death. To put the two scenes side by side is to see clearly a contrast of dark deadness v. the light of life.
In fact, contained in this Stave Four and its two scenes of death, is the entire narrative sweep of the Great Story told throughout the pages of the Scriptures. Can you see it? Man was made in the eternal image of God; man rejected that image bringing upon himself death and eternal separation from God; God, in the form of Man came down from heaven, overcame death by taking man’s death and destruction upon Himself and dying on the cross, then on the third day rose again from the dead so that all who believe in Him shall no more—not in life or in death—be separated from His eternal, life-giving love. Amen and Amen!
With this in mind, it is no wonder that Dickens chooses a small child, whose “essence was from God,” to be, in his death, the one that ripples out with new life. This is Christ: the baby born to Mary who is Christ the Lord. The one who is greatest in heaven, but “became a child” for our sake so that we might become “childlike” in Him.
Notice how everything about this scene in the Cratchit’s home is animated by this childlike innocence and love. It begins with Peter’s reading of Jesus’ words about becoming like a little child. When Bob comes home, the family’s conversation, though sad, is shot through with generosity, kindness… love. As the scene closes, Bob declares twice his is “very happy” and exchanges sweet kisses and warm handshakes of affection with his family. And in this moment, our narrator describes him as “little Bob.” For, in this death, Bob becomes transformed by the animating spirit of his son—that is, the Spirit of the Son—into his most human, childlike self.
This is Christmas: The Son born to Mary at the center of it all. He is the hinge by which the story opens into a new Way. He is the turning point, even as He is the Creator, the Main Character, and the Writer who turns our dénouement of death into one of eternal life with Him! When, at the end of his time with the last Ghost, Scrooge declares: “I will honour Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year. I will live in the Past, the Present, and the Future. The Spirits of all Three shall strive within me,” he is speaking of nothing less than Christ in his heart, and the Triune God—Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—as his life-long guide.
And now the night of Scrooge’s blessing is complete. Christmas has come. Now is the day of his new birth.
May it be the same for us.
God rest ye merry gentlemen
Let nothing you dismay
Remember Christ our Savior
Was born on Christmas Day
To save us all from Satan's pow'r
When we were gone astray
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
Comfort and joy
Oh tidings of comfort and joy
For further contemplation and engagement:
Reread Stave Four of A Christmas Carol. Make note of all the places in it where you see the Great Story being told. What new things might you discover?
Journal the ways you recognize Scrooge’s time with the Ghost of Christmas Future illustrating the Scripture passages selected to go with this Advent Week of Love.
What other passages and stories from the Bible are you reminded of as you read Stave Four of A Christmas Carol, along with this essay? Write these down and spend time meditating on them. Pray and ask the Lord to reveal how He would have you draw closer to Him through them.
Read Love (III) by George Herbert, and A Christmas Carol by Christina Rossetti. Make note of words and images that capture your imagination. Take these to the Lord in prayer.
Look at the artwork, Christ in the Home of His Parents, by John Everett Millais. Use Visio Divina to engage with it. How do you recognize love being expressed in the artwork?
Thank you so much for journeying with The Reader & the Writer this Advent season. Rhea and I are so thankful for you. We pray you have been blessed by what you have listened to and read this season. May your Christmas be filled to overflowing with His everlasting Love, and your 2025 be marked by childlike faith that Christ alone gives.