On the news last night, they reported that the Last Minute Toy Store was running out of gifts for underprivileged children. Food banks are stretched to their limits. People are desperate for Christmas with all the trimmings. Who isn’t? Christmas is the most needful of all the holidays. The desire to please our families, especially the children, drives everyone to do more, be more, use more than any other holiday (though Halloween is still the holiday on which people spend money!). Many kindhearted souls contribute to Salvation Army buckets accompanied by bellringing, give to multiple charities, serve at various places, and create magical memories for their families.

And it should be that way. It was DIckens’s A Christmas Carol that spurred people to act with generosity. One story tells that Queen Victoria received a copy of Dickens’s beautifully ornamented book served with breakfast on Christmas morning 1843 of its publication. Like Jonathan Swift’s A Modest Proposal, published in 1729, Dickens shocked England, and eventually the world, at the prospect of Tiny Tim dying from malnutrition and lack of medical care. Such a thing should not happen at Christmas!

However, hunger, lack of medical care, homelessness, and all the other issues still exist the other 364 days of the year. Scrooge vowed to keep Christmas in his heart all the year-long. Would that the desire to help others existed year round in all of us. Political issues aside, God is Love. He expects Christians in particular to show God’s Love all the time, in all the ways, to all the world.