Photo Credit: Ryan Klinck

By Andrea Lingle

This year our whole family is reading A Christmas Carol, and I am having the joy of reading it through new eyes. Oliver Trotwood, my third child, named after David "Trotwood" Copperfield, has been setting his alarm an hour early to read before school starts. 

Because these words of Dickens are delightful. 

From the first words, you hear the grin behind the words:

Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that.

This is a set up. You know it. Dickens knew it. The only one, it seems, to be in the dark was Scrooge. Scrooge did not know he was to be the parable of modern-day Christmas.

Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail. Mind! I don’t mean to say that I know, of my own knowledge, what there is particularly dead about a door-nail. I might have been inclined, myself, to regard a coffin-nail as the deadest piece of ironmongery in the trade. But the wisdom of our ancestors is in the simile; and my unhallowed hands shall not disturb it, or the Country’s done for. You will therefore permit me to repeat, emphatically, that Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

We start with Marley being emphatically dead. We know that we are starting here, but we see the gleam in the story-teller's eye. We won't be staying here. Advent is just such a time. It knows we are trudging with a limp down the sleet-soaked streets of winter. Advent knows we are worn out by hype and leery of expectation. There are so many voices clamoring for attention that one almost envies Scrooge his ability "to edge his way along the crowded paths of life, warning all human sympathy to keep its distance." 

We want to live at the edge of song, ready, with Mary, to cry out that we are ready to bear Christ into the world, but how often does our song die on our lips because we are just too exhausted to think of a tune. 

So, we will turn to Dickens lovely carol this Advent.

How do words delight? How do they conjure up memory? How do they inspire us to to aim our aspirations toward kindness? I have no idea, but I am so glad they do. I am grateful that here in the age of answered questions there is still a little mystery left. A Christmas Carol was written 181 years ago: to different people with different lives in a different place, and Dickens's words still delight and inspire.

This Advent I am longing for inspiration—I need it like a dry riverbed needs rain. I want to wonder why doornails are particularly dead and how "Good Afternoon" can deal such a blow. I invite you to join the Missional Wisdom Foundation as we journey through the Advent season with Scrooge. Please gather around these marvelous words and be inspired.
 

Throughout Advent, you will find resources here for engaging with A Christmas Carol and Mary's Magnificat. Each week in the Wisdom for the Way, you will find a brief reflection, a link to online study resources, and a small group liturgy. Please use them for your Advent Journey.