Ebenezer Scrooge was really rattled by his visit from the Spirit of Christmas past. He knew there would be a next visitor -- the Spirit of Christmas Present, and he braced himself. He would not be surprised. Dickens writes that, now, "nothing between a baby and a rhinoceros would have astonished him very much."1

What he met was a great robed figure with a huge holly wreath on his head and all awash in ivy and mistletoe and turkeys and geese and suckling pigs and sausages and oysters and pies and puddings and fruit and a steaming punch bowl. "Look at me," the spirit said. "You've never seen the like of me before!"

"Never" said Scrooge. "What have you to teach me?"

And in a flash they were off looking at sailors on the seas and miners who dug in the earth, and each one in some way celebrating Christmas -- the advent of hope. In sick-beds and foreign lands and jails and hospitals, they saw people who recalled that it was Christmas and marked it in some modest fashion. They looked in on Ebenezer's nephew, Fred, with his family and friends playing children's games after dinner -- Blind Man's Bluff and other games -- "for it is good to be children sometimes," writes Dickens, "and never better than at Christmas, when its mighty Founder was a child Himself."2

And, finally, at the end of the journey, from under his great green robe, the Spirit of Christmas Present produced two children -- two ragged, malnourished children, pinched and shriveled by monstrous need. "The boy is Ignorance ... the girl is Want" says the spirit. "But where do they belong?"

"They belong to humanity" is the answer.

And Scrooge recalled how, that very day when they came to his business to ask for a donation to help the poor, he had run them off with words like, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses?" Now he understood. These gaunt children will wind up there --ignorance and want will put them there -- unless somebody comes to help at the front end of their lifetime. That pattern is with us yet, and not to be forgotten.

But the heart of this part of the story, to me, is the visit to the Cratchitt home. "They were not a handsome family," says Dickens, "not well-dressed; their shoes were far from being waterproof; their clothes were sooty -- but they were happy, grateful, and contented with the time."3

Hold that picture for a moment and cut away to our text at the end of Philippians. It says the same thing. Paul is saying thank you to a church he clearly loves. He's in prison, probably in Rome, but he's allowed to have writing materials and to receive food and clothing and money from outside. And that's what these Philippians have sent him by Epaphroditus, one of their church members.

Paul has a little trouble here saying thank you. In fact, he never actually uses the word thanks. Sitting in chains day after day can rob you of zest and sensitivity and interest in a lot of things. And Paul always walked that thin line between gratitude and dependence with his churches. He insisted on his freedom to preach an unhindered Gospel.