Yesterday I watched one of my favourite Christmas movies: It’s A Wonderful Life.  It’s the story of a good man who’s falling apart … George Bailey.  Financial disaster.  Yelling at his wife and kids, who hardly recognize him anymore.  All is lost.

Clarence Odbody is an angel who has been sent down to Earth to help George weather the storm.

Clarence is also a good man.  He has something for George to experience … disappearing from the planet.

“You’ve been given a great gift, George … a chance to see what the world would be like without you.”

No George.  No one to rescue his kid brother from a fall through the ice.  And so the 9-year-old boy dies.  No one to carry on the Bailey Brothers Building and Loan after his father dies.  And so no one to give poor families a break on their loans. 

No one to be kind to everyone he meets

And what about you and me?  Who has been touched by our kindness?  Whose lives would have been diminished if we’d never come along?

I ask you to look back through the years and see the faces who are smiling when they think of you.  Faces that will remember you even as death approaches.  Really get that you matter.

I’m doing that now

And the smile comes

I matter too

Don’t we all