Remember “Today’s Tiny Tims”

Disney’s 3D adaptation of A Christmas Carol is introducing a new generation to Charles Dickens’ classic holiday tale of greed, poverty, and repentance. This is good news for parents concerned by the avalanche of materialistic messages that too often overwhelm the humble story of Jesus’ birth and the value of giving.

Even if the latest incarnation of Dickens’ cautionary tale doesn’t hold a candle to the previous Disney effort in which a duck played the lead role, the theme of a sinner repenting of his greed and finding compassion for the poor remains as relevant as ever.

A recent article by history professor Lisa Toland encourages us to think about “today’s Tiny Tims”:

For a great percentage of the world—and especially for children—the current recession is not a new experience of real need; many have lived in poverty for generations, even centuries. Theirs is an unending recession….

Scrooge’s newfound compassion pushes Dickens’s readers of every age and culture to pursue their own courses of charity. For there will always be faces pressed against our windows.

When those faces appear in our windows, as they inevitably do, our instinct is to close the curtains. We want to shut out those unpleasant images that threaten the comfortable world we have built around ourselves. But God’s way is different. He wants us to open our doors and welcome in the hungry and the homeless. He wants us to remember that we too would be beggars on the street, but for the grace we did not earn.

Cross International Catholic Outreach needs your help to reach out to today’s Tiny Tims. You can support orphaned and abandoned children in Ethiopia, provide meals and care for disabled children in the Philippines, or check out some of our other great projects today!