I love the musical "Scrooge" with Albert Finney in the lead role, based on Charles Dickens's, A Christmas Carol.  Stories told with music and lyrics can bring to mind many lines that I most likely would otherwise forget.  After an especially long night, with visits from his old partner Marley and Christmases Past, Present and Future, Scrooge awakes to find himself alive and with a new outlook on life -"I've got a chance to change and I will not be the man I was!" 

Nothing helps repentance like a near death experience!  Faced with a wasted life and a future of endless COLD and misery, Scrooge does not accept his doom, but rather takes this second chance to make the changes in his life that will bring him to a much more pleasant existence. 

A little excerpt from the visit by Jacob Marley:

"Oh! captive, bound, and double-ironed,” cried the phantom, “not to know, that ages of incessant labour by immortal creatures, for this earth must pass into eternity before the good of which it is susceptible is all developed. Not to know that any Christian spirit working kindly in its little sphere, whatever it may be, will find its mortal life too short for its vast means of usefulness. Not to know that no space of regret can make amends for one life’s opportunity misused! Yet such was I! Oh! such was I!”

“But you were always a good man of business, Jacob,” faltered Scrooge, who now began to apply this to himself.

“Business!” cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. “Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!”

It held up its chain at arm’s length, as if that were the cause of all its unavailing grief, and flung it heavily upon the ground again.

“At this time of the rolling year,” the spectre said, “I suffer most. Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”

(If you don't have The Christmas Carol, you can read it on line here.  But it is always better to cuddle up with a book than a computer!) 

This time of year always reminds me of King Benjamin's sermon, which I speak of often.  But remember these words in Mosiah 4:

16…ye yourselves will succor those that stand in need of your succor; ye will administer of your substance unto him that standeth in need; and ye will not suffer that the beggar putteth up his petition to you in vain, and turn him out to perish.

Let me repeat Marley's lament:

"Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!”

May it never be our regret!  Have a wonderful and memorable Christmas season…one that you will cherish!