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Hello, friend.

This is Max Lakato.

Thanks for tuning in.

It's an honor to be with you.

As we study God's word together,

may our time uplift and encourage you.

If you could use some hope, I pray you find it here today.

I know Christmas was months ago, but I hope you'll indulge my Dickensian illustration in today's

episode. The tale of Ebenezer Scrooge paints just the right picture and helps remind us that

abundant grace of God has the power to unscruge the most stubborn hearts.

Oh, but he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone Scrooge.

A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, clutching, covetous old sinner.

Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out a generous fire,

secret and self-contained, solitary as an oyster.

The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shriveled his cheek,

stiffened his gait, made his eyes red, thin lips blue, and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice.

Isn't there's a great paragraph?

A frosty rhyme was on his head and on his eyebrows and his wiry chin.

He carried his own low temperature, always about with him.

He iced his office in the dog days and didn't thaw at one degree at Christmas.

Way to go, Charles Dickens.

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