A central ingredient to a good movie is the characters. Story line and plot are extremely important, but if the characters don’t fill out the roles, the movie doesn’t make it. This time of year the movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life” is viewed by millions. I am betting you can picture this litany of characters in your mind: George, Mary, Pa and Ma Bailey; Mr. Potter, Uncle Billy, Mr. Martini, Bert the police officer and Ernie the cab driver, Sam Wainright, Violet, Mr. Gower, and Zuzu. If you cannot picture them all, I suspect still recognize their role in the movie.
No doubt your life, like mine, has also involved quite a cast of characters over the years. Some are characters because of various eccentricities. Some may be characters because their primary eccentricity was having nothing eccentric about them. They were as straight as people come, always living life “by the book” as we sometimes say.
This time of year always reminds me of one such character in my past. His name was Steve. Steve ran the local soup kitchen in downtown Colorado Springs. He was a former Roman Catholic priest and lived in a type of eco-friendly commune with a few other similarly minded folk. They recycled everything. Yes, everything! None of them owned a car. When asked why he did not own a car, Steve would answer, “Because I do own two good feet!”
Our congregation took turns preparing, serving, and cleaning up at the soup kitchen. Every Friday was our turn. We averaged about 450 hungry souls each week.
On a Friday just before Christmas I took my confirmation class to slice, dice, peel, stir, dish up, and clean up. It seemed every five minutes or so someone would enter the soup kitchen doors with a box or boxes. The announcement seemed always about the same, “We are from St. John’s by the Gas Station Church and we made (or we have) a. socks, b. mittens, c. ski caps, d. candy canes, e. other,
Each time I would select a couple confirmands to distribute the donated items to those around the tables. Steve would always help out as did I. During the distribution of one donated item….I think it was candy canes….Steve stopped, looked at me, and said, “Sometimes our mission is to feed the hungry; sometimes it is to give stuff away.”
Only a day later Steve wrote an article for the local newspaper. The article described how people’s generosity went up a few notches every December as Christmas approached. I expected a note of cynicism in his writing. Not so. Steve did say it would be great if people exhibited the same generosity all year long. Many societal issues could be eliminated or at least greatly alleviated were this so. Yet each December Steve professed a certain hope. Steve’s hope was that maybe every once in a while someone whose giving was stimulated by the Christmas season may be moved to continue this generous spirit for the rest of the year and possibly for the rest of the person’s life.
When is the last time you took a look at the depth of your spirit of generosity? I know ours is a very generous community. Statistically we are better than average. We have to be as very few communities our size could ever pull off what we do each year without a greater than average depth of generosity. Christmas had its start in pondering. Mary pondered what the angel Gabriel said to her. Christmas can be a good time for you and I to ponder our commitment to sharing and giving. As we wait to receive, might we also ponder in our waiting how we might better give? When is the last time this thought occupied your mind?
The God who takes on human flesh at Christmas in the baby Jesus comes to us to live in us and give to us. This God does so for us to be able to give to others. Who and what is out there that could use something, some gift that we have? We can make this Christmas a time of waiting for opportunities to become more deeply committed to giving and sharing our gifts where they would be of use. Ponder this. Sharpen your spirit of generosity and you just might become a leading character among those other characters in someone else’s life. What if giving of yourself becomes the eccentricity for which you will be known? God places many characters in our life. Share with them, learn from them and grow from doing so. Be one of God’s eccentric givers.