What is my Business?

Advent is a wonderful season. When I was growing up we had a tradition of participating in advent. We would gather in our living room and run through a beautiful routine. 

1. Read a devotional and scripture passage from one of those little advent booklets.
2. Mom read aloud A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens.
3. Open Christmas cards. 
4. Open the advent calendar
5. Sing a Christmas carol together.
6. Offer up prayer requests, and talk with God. 

It's a beautiful thing that we do. I'm so glad that my parents set aside that time for us each year. We continue to celebrate it together when we are home, and mom is patient enough that she waits to read A Christmas Carol until I can be present, because it's one of my favorite activities that we share. I was able to be there for our advent celebration this weekend. I nuzzled up next to her as she opened the beloved story and began to cry to herself (as she does every year) while reading the opening sentence, "Marley was dead to begin with." It is the official start of our Christmas celebration. Everyone just waits for her first tear to fall so they can tease her, but I understand. 

This year, as she read the familiar words from the pages, I was struck very deeply by a section in the book more than I have ever been. I am posting it below so that we can share it together. To set up the scene, Scrooge is having a conversation with his old business partner, who happens to have been dead for seven years. But there he stands, in Scrooge's bedchamber, in the hopes of offering the old miser a second chance, and a renewed state of mind. When Scrooge begins to ask about life after death, this is Marley's response...

     "Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed," cried the phantom, "not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immoral creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its moral life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life's opportunities misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!"
     "But you were always a good man of business, Jacob," faultered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.
     "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!"
     It held up its chain at arm's length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.
     "At this time of the rolling year," the spectre said, "I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!"

Later in the chapter Scrooge walks to the window to see Jacob Marley as he is leaving and he sees a great many other ghosts in great agony, crying out to people in the streets who were in need. Dickens writes...
   
     "The misery with them all was, clearly, that they sought to interfere, for good, in human matters, and had lost the power for ever." 

I sat in the living room, of a large warm house, overcome with conviction. The passage served as a magnifying glass through which to view my own apathy. And what an ugly sight it was. I share this, not because I am overwhelmed by the apathy of others, or even the cruelty of the world, but because I am overwhelmed with my own selfishness. It is staggering when held in the appropriate light. 

I don't know what Hell is like, but what a truly interesting idea, that Hell is to look upon this world with, finally, a clear understanding of what is important, and being unable to act upon those new found convictions. It is a haunting idea. May it continue to haunt me as I walk forward from this passage. May its passion be reignited upon revisiting it every year, and may its message be transforming in my heart, mind, and actions.