Scrooge: A 5 Day Devotional Based on the Charles Dickens' Classic TaleSample

The Last of the Spirits: The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come

Extending Mercy

Why is it that the people closest to us are so often the hardest to forgive?

Sure, according to the Proverb, love can cover a multitude of sins, but it can also feel like some wounds cut too deep to be forgiven. And the thing about the holidays is the person you’re struggling to forgive might be sitting right across the table.

Like Scrooge on the last leg of his Christmas reckoning, this time alongside the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come, the holly jolly season ahead may force us to come face-to-face with the very people who have hurt us the deepest. For Dickens’s unmerciful miser, the ones he hurt the most were those he spent his life short-changing: the looters at his house, poor old Bob Cratchit, and his nephew Frederick.

Who in your own life has caused similar scars to the ones Scrooge etched?

Maybe it’s a parent whose actions broke your family apart.

A friend choosing selfishness over friendship.

A child walking down a destructive path.

Hurt runs deep, especially when it’s inflicted by the people in our lives who are supposed to love us. Incredibly, those Scrooge wounded the most—Frederick and Bob Cratchit—chose not to hold onto bitterness and instead forgave this man who had wronged them at every turn. In doing so, they showed Scrooge the power mercy can hold—how it frees not only the wrongdoer but also the person who was wronged.

Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy, right? (Matthew 5:7). Forgiving those who have hurt us lets them off our emotional hook—and lightens our emotional baggage. We set them loose, refuse to let them live rent-free in our heads, and as a result, free not only them but ourselves.

Jesus is the perfect example of showing mercy and practicing forgiveness towards people who don’t deserve it—namely, you and me! And he asks us to do the same, even when it’s far from easy.

“So whatever you say or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law that sets you free. There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you” (James 2:12-13). When done authentically, forgiveness brings freedom—a freedom that satisfies more than holding a grudge ever could. Who are you being called to forgive this Christmas? Chances are they’re just a trip down the hall or a phone call away. Will you go there?

Question: Forgiveness is such a difficult thing to practice, made even harder when the person who hurt us is a family member or close friend. Who do you need to forgive this Christmas season? What’s one step you can take today to extend mercy to them and find freedom for yourself?

Jump into the world of Scrooge: A Christmas Carolby listening to the companion podcast from Hope Nation here!