Springville, Utah, USA
One of those books that make you rethink everything in life...
There are books and and then there is prose, the kind that can change your life or at least create the desire within you to do something meaningful in the days ahead. The Christmas Gift by R. William Bennett was one such experience. Yes I will call it an experience, because I didn’t merely read a story, I saw glimpses of my own life and the lives of those I love, flash before me as analogies to what Ben and Scott go through in the tale.
There are paragraphs in the book that could feel like they are seemingly describing anecdotes from the lives of two young boys, and yet close your eyes and rethink; and it is not very hard to visualize the last time you were a “Ben” or “Scott” or “Andy”. We have a bit of all of them in us. We have met people like Mrs. Jackson, sometimes we have chosen to heed the words from her or from Scott’s dad, and sometimes we have chosen to ignore them and then eat humble “pie”.
The Christmas Gift tells all our stories in one way or another. It talks to the human spirit that is at times, frail, unkind, unforgiving, but there is much more to it and you have to read the book to really feel your soul. The author in the first 2 pages makes this dedication-
“The story is dedicated to all those who have offered an apology, no matter how difficult, to those who have given forgiveness deserved or not, .. and to those who are striving to do so.”
I keep going back to these lines and trying to figure out where I fit, and in all honesty, it is the last phrase that is the one I have to admit, I struggle most with. Very few books have made me feel I am looking into a mirror, this one does that an more.
Read it… enough said.. the rest you’ve got to figure out on your own…
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