I love the Grinch … so much so that for two of my four Decembers at LifeNet, I was the Grinch. I visited hospitals. I took photos with hundreds of kids across all of our service areas. COVID and Copyrights made me hang up my green fur, but the excitement in the eyes of so many kiddos (and adults) during those events will always warm my heart when the memories pop up!
I digress! I also usually love seeing Grinch memes in my Facebook newsfeed. They make me laugh.
One this week, however, has made me really stop and think.
“The Grinch really didn’t hate Christmas. He hated people. Which is fair.”
Wait … what???
If the meaning of Christmas is to celebrate the birth of Christ, than justifying “it’s fair” that the Grinch hated people sums up a lot of what is wrong with our society today.
Christmas is a holiday for Christians to celebrate the birth of Christ. And Christ teaches us to love people, show them grace and mercy, no matter what they have done to us.
I was drawn to Romans 13:8-10 as I pondered this today…
Let no debt remain outstanding, except the continuing debt to love one another, for whoever loves others has fulfilled the law. The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,”and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.
But then I also realized the magic in the meme!
As the Grinch realized Christmas wasn’t about things from the store, his heart grew. His heart grew because he found a love for people and the spirit of Christmas.
So then I realized the meme wasn’t all that bad after all.
Like the Grinch, so often we lose sight of the most important thing in life … our relationships with other people. We allow pride to trump humility. We allow anger to trump forgiveness. We allow idolatry to paint pictures of what a holiday should be instead of allowing the word of God to remind us it’s not about presents, ribbons, or bows!
So thanks to all of you who shared this meme … and all of you who will continue to share it. Because as one who played the Grinch for two years, I can assure you I did it from a place of love in my heart. A place where I knew the love for others and the opportunity to make them smile was one of the greatest blessings of this holiday season!
