Life can truly change in a moment. For better or worse, everything can change: like when a person says yes--or no--to a marriage proposal, or when a child is born, when a loved one dies, when you start a new job, or, above all else, when you say yes to God! I have seen these changes in the lives of Christians whose lives were reawakened by sharing Christ's love in a mission field. While many turning points in life are gradual, there are some that are dramatic U-turns. Ebenezer Scrooge underwent such a radical change--and things were never the same.

When Scrooge went home from work on Christmas Eve, he expected nothing different than any other night. For him, Christmas was just "a poor excuse to pick a man's pocket"--since he had to pay his employee Bob Cratchit for the holiday. But when Scrooge awakened following his "holy visitations," he really awakened!

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Scrooge awakened with a joy and love for life that he absolutely could not contain. It bubbled over. He immediately took the part of a "secret angel," and had the largest prize turkey delivered to the Cratchits for Christmas dinner. Then he sought out the gentlemen whose charitable request he had snubbed the evening before, making a generous contribution that truly stunned them. Scrooge also mustered up the courage to attend his nephew's party, offering his apology and seeking full reconciliation with Fred and Fred's wife, whom he had never met.

Scrooge's actions need not be viewed as some sort of penance, as if they served to "make up" for (in a meritorious sense) his previous actions. They were genuine expressions of the Christmas spirit. He had moved from "humbug to hallelujah!"

As we complete our series, "From Humbug to Hallelujah," we come to the real test of Scrooge's conversion. Now, remember that Dickens did not intend to teach a full doctrine of Christian theology. When we speak of a Christian conversion, for example, we know that it comes through faith in Jesus Christ, not by our own works. Scrooge's conversion can best be understood as an expression of the fruit of salvation, not the root of salvation. It is the expression of a changed life, not the means to somehow earn eternal life. Through Scrooge, Dickens shows us how to live out what we say we believe. Scrooge shows us how the Spirit of Christ and the message of Christmas can and should change every aspect of life.

Scrooge had said, "I will honor 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. I will not shut out the lessons that they teach." Just what does Scrooge mean when he says he will live in the lessons of the past, present and the future? How does he change from a humbug worldview to one of hallelujah? How can we keep the Christmas spirit alive?

You see; there's a problem with the Christmas spirit. Have you noticed how it fades? Like New Year's resolutions, the Christmas spirit is quickly forgotten as life returns to the routine. Stuart Briscoe gives one of the most striking illustrations of this fact. He tells a story first told to him many years ago by an old German man. This man had fought with the German forces in the First World War. In those days, warfare was not high-tech but hand-to-hand trench warfare. Soldiers lived, fought, and died in trenches full of mud and blood and vermin. In those trenches, dug in the fields of France, enemies could actually hear each other talking. They didn't need satellites to locate targets. The enemy was just over there.

This old gentleman told Stuart how on one cold, moonlit Christmas Eve, he huddled in the bottom of the trench. Because of the annual Christmas truce, the fighting had stopped. Suddenly, from the British trenches a loud, sweet tenor voice began to sing "The Lord Is My Shepherd," and the music floated up into the clear, moonlit air.

Then he said something surprising: from the German trenches, a rich baritone voice joined in, singing "Der Herr Ist Mein Hirte." For a few moments, everybody in both trenches concentrated on the sound of these two invisible singers and the beautiful harmony. The British soldier and the German soldier sang praise to the Lord who was their shepherd. The singing stopped, and the sound slowly died away.

"We huddled in the bottom of our trenches and tried to keep warm until Christmas Day dawned," he said. "Early on Christmas morning, some of the British soldiers climbed out of their trenches into No Man's Land, carrying a football."

One soldier carried a round football (by which Stuart, a native of England, means what we in the United States call a soccer ball). These English soldiers started kicking around a football, in a pickup game in no man's land, between the trenches. Then the old man said, "Some of the German soldiers climbed out, and England played Germany at football in No Man's Land on Christmas Day, in the middle of the battlefield in France in the first World War." (England won.)

Then he said, "The next morning, the carnage began again, with machine guns and bayonet fighting. Everything was back to normal."

(Stuart Briscoe, "Christmas 365 Days a Year," Preaching Today)

So how do we keep things from going back to normal? Or better yet, how do we create a new normal, as Scrooge did? We do this by letting the hallelujah of Christ's birth touch every aspect of our lives. First, then, the hallelujah life trusts God to redeem the past.

The hallelujah life trusts god to redeem the past
As we have already seen, the past has tremendous power to shape our experience in the present. Too often we fail to realize, however, that the past need not control our lives. Unless we make conscious choices, we will likely remain captive to the wounds or regrets of the past. To understand this, let's look at three primary ways to deal with the past.

You can regret your past
The humbug life lives in the land of regret, wallowing in the sadness of opportunities lost or mistakes made. We can keep the past alive by punishing ourselves with guilty feelings or grudges, with remorse or resentment. In short, we can allow the past to overpower the present. When we do, regret becomes a dull ache, flaring up at the most inconvenient times. We rob not only ourselves in every moment, but we rob the people around us through our preoccupation.

In the hallelujah life, however, the past is utilized to educate us, to train us. It is the means to expose our need, so we can find God's solution to that need. It exposes our weaknesses, so we find God's strength. The past cannot make things better, but it can be the catalyst that makes us seek better things.

There are many, however, who refuse the value of memory. They say that it is better to just forget the past.

You can forget your past
There are many who cope with life's hurts by choosing to live in the land of denial. They may anesthetize themselves with substances, activities, and/ or people. They may compartmentalize their lives in order to lessen the tension caused by their conflicting values and behavior. In the end, however, the dark forces control them. They greatly underestimate the power of the past to influence the present.

The hallelujah life however, understands that denial is never an answer. The Bible teaches us that the truth alone sets us free (John 8:32). It also teaches us that:

God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin (1 John 1:5-7).

Those who forget their past lose one of the richest sources of energy, inspiration and instruction. They also lose their sense of need for God and the blessing of God's grace in their lives. Jesus came to deal with our past. That leads us to our third option.

Or you can let God redeem your past by faith
The message of the angels to the shepherds in Luke 2:11 was that a Savior had been born to free people. This savior, Jesus, would set them free not from Roman rule, but from the more tyrannical dominion of their sin, their failure, their bitterness and resentment. He would bring peace with God and others.

God redeems the past through forgiveness. The Bible says that through faith in Christ "your sins may be wiped out" (Acts 3:19). In this passage from Acts, Peter is telling the people in Jerusalem who had clamored for Jesus' crucifixion that they could be forgiven for the sin of putting Jesus Christ to death. The Greek word exaleipho means to wash off, erase, obliterate. It is used in The Book of Revelation both of God who wipes away our tears (Rev. 7:17; 21:4) and of Christ who refuses to erase our name from the book of life (Rev. 3:5). William Barclay explains the allusion: "Ancient writing was upon papyrus, and the ink used had no acid in it. It therefore did not bite into the papyrus as modern ink does; it simply lay upon the top of it. To erase the writing a man might take a wet sponge and simply wipe it away." Just so, when God forgives our sins, he wipes the slate clean (Isa. 43:25).
(John Stott, The Spirit, the Church and the World, InterVarsity Press: Downers Grove, Illinois, 1990, p. 93)

I once heard a story about a man named Tom Anderson. For years he lived under the shadow of a bitter memory. He had participated in a hazing ceremony in college that resulted in the death of a fellow student. He floundered from one job to another. He and his wife separated after six years of marriage. Then the news about Tom changed. He and his wife got back together; he earned a fine position in the business world. This was his explanation for the change:

I used to think, "Nothing can undo what I have done." The thought of my guilt would stop me in the middle of a smile or a handshake. It put a wall between Betty (my wife) and me. Then I had an unexpected visit from the person I most dreaded to see--the mother of the college classmate who died.
"Years ago," she said, "I found it in my heart, through prayer, to forgive you. Betty forgave you. So did your friends and employers." She paused, and then said sternly, "You are the only person who hasn't forgiven Tom Anderson. Who do you think you are to stand out against the people of the town and the Lord Almighty?"
I looked into her eyes and found there a kind of permission to be the person I might have been if her boy had lived. For the first time in my adult life I felt worthy to love and be loved.
(Ron James, Creed and Christ, Nashville: The Upper Room, p. 122)

And is there not a world of meaning in the fact that it was very ordinary people, busy about very ordinary tasks, whose eyes first saw "the glory of the coming of the Lord"? It means, first of all, that the place of duty, however humble, is the place of vision. And it means, second, that it is the men who have kept to the deep, simple pieties of life and have not lost the child heart to whom the gates of the Kingdom most readily open.
(James S. Stewart, The Life and Teaching of Jesus Christ, Nashville: Abingdon Press, p. 24)

Instead of making a New Year's resolution this year, make a Hallelujah Faith Promise to the Lord. Ask him to guide your goals in a prayer like this: "Lord, with your help, this coming year I will _____." Then set a date for three months from now to see whether your hallelujah spirit is still thriving in that situation.

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