Are You Willing?
Are you willing to forget what you have done for other people, and
to remember what other people have done for you;...
Are you willing to stoop down and consider the needs and the desires
of little children; to remember the weakness and loneliness of people
who are growing old; to stop asking how much your friends love you,
and ask yourself whether you love them enough; to bear in mind all the
things that other peple have to baer on their hearts; to try to
understand what those who live in the same house with you really want,
withouth waiting for them to tell you; to trim your lamp so that
it will give more light and less smoke...; to make a grave for your
ugly thoughts and a garden for your kindly feelings, with the gate
open -- are you willing to do these things even for a day? Then you
can keep Christmas.
Are you willing to believe that love is the strongest thing in the
world -- stronger than hate, stronger than evil, stronger than
death -- and that the blessed life which began in Bethlehem nineteen
hundred years ago is the image and brightness of the Eternal Love?
Then you can keep Christmas.
And if you can keep it for a day, why not always?
But you can never keep it alone.
Henry Van Dyke
