As we begin the Christmas season we would do well to remember the following from J.I. Packer's Knowing God:...The Christmas spirit itself ought to be the mark of every Christian all the year round. It is to our shame and disgrace today that so many Christians....go through this world in the spirit of the priest and the Levite in our Lord's parable, seeing human needs all around them, but...averting their eyes, and passing by on the other side. That is not the Christmas spirit. Nor is it the spirit of those Christians - alas, they are many - whose ambition in life seems limited to building a nice middle-class Christian home, and making nice middle-class Christian friends, and bringing up their children in nice middle-class Christian ways, and who leave the sub-middle-class sections of the community, Christian and non-Christian, to get on by themselves.The Christmas spirit does not shine out in the Christian snob. For the Christmas spirit is the spirit of those who, like their Master, live their whole lives on the principle of making themselves poor - spending and being spent - to enrich their fellowmen, giving time, trouble, care and concern, to do good to others - and not just their own friends - in whatever way there seems need. There are not as many who show this spirit as there should be (page 56).
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