Chances are, you know someone this Christmas who is struggling in some area. People have problems all year long, but Charles Dickens said it best in A Christmas Carol, ” …. We choose this time, because it is a time, of all others, when Want is keenly felt, and Abundance rejoices.”

At Christmas, when we are making merry and decorating our homes and gathering our children in, Want is very keenly felt by some. Want comes in all kinds of costume; illness, grief, depression, need, loneliness, fear. There are all kinds of ways that Want is felt.

Dickens also encourages us to deny Ignorance about Want in ourselves and in others.

“They were a boy and a girl. Yellow, meagre, ragged, scowling, wolfish; but prostrate, too, in their humility. Where graceful youth should have filled their features out, and touched them with its freshest tints, a stale and shrivelled hand, like that of age, had pinched, and twisted them, and pulled them into shreds. Where angels might have sat enthroned, devils lurked, and glared out menacing. No change, no degradation, no perversion of humanity, in any grade, through all the mysteries of wonderful creation, has monsters half so horrible and dread.

Scrooge started back, appalled. Having them shown to him in this way, he tried to say they were fine children, but the words choked themselves, rather than be parties to a lie of such enormous magnitude.

“Spirit. are they yours.” Scrooge could say no more.

“They are Man’s,” said the Spirit, looking down upon them. “And they cling to me, appealing from their fathers. This boy is Ignorance. This girl is Want. Beware them both, and all of their degree, but most of all beware this boy, for on his brow I see that written which is Doom, unless the writing be erased. Deny it.’ cried the Spirit, stretching out its hand towards the city. “Slander those who tell it ye. Admit it for your factious purposes, and make it worse. And abide the end.” ”

In other words, we must stop telling ourselves that people around us don’t Want and don’t need and don’t feel it more acutely at Christmas time. We must make ourselves open our eyes and see the Want. We are responsible for our fellow men and women, especially those whom God puts in our path.

It will be December soon and I encourage you to reach out to someone in some way in the coming weeks. It may be that you could offer groceries, friendship, a meal, prayer, counseling or just an ear to hear. If you ask God to bring someone to you who needs you, He will do it.

Giving to others doesn’t deplete the giver, but it enriches both the giver and the one to whom something is given. Even if you are suffering or struggling yourself, the best remedy is to reach out to someone else with love and provision.

Don’t stay shut up in yourself this Christmas, open your heart and your home, open your eyes to the Want and fill needs where you see them. In providing for want, you will be the hands of Jesus and will truly keep Christmas in the way that honors God.