“I know what I’m going to do tomorrow and the next day and the next year and the year after that: I’m shaking the dust of this crummy little town off my feet and I’m going to see the world! Italy, Greece; the Parthenon, the Colosseum…Then I’m coming back here and go to college and see what they know [sic]… And then I’m going to build things. I’m gonna build air fields; I’m gonna build skyscrapers a hundred stories high; I’m gonna build bridges a mile long… ”
So says a hopeful, wanderlust-stricken George Bailey while walking his future wife Mary home from a school dance one night. At this point, George has a nearly fatal flaw in his system, already starting to fester. Even a first-time viewer might sense that, if they’re familiar with these words:
“Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit.’ Yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.’”
So says the Apostle James, in James 4:13-15.
When our expectations and daydreams turn out to be a far cry from reality, we experience disappointment and disillusionment that can be disorienting. This is the story of George Bailey in what Time Out, AV Club, as well as many friends and family members consider to be the best Christmas film of all time: It’s a Wonderful Life.
All his life, George contends with this gap between his big dreams for his future and the big demands of the present. Today, I’d like to look at the parts of George’s character that make him such a strong Christmas protagonist—a man who strives to live by his (biblical) principles, who cracks under the weight of trying to live out those principles on his own, and who is given a gift to ground him in gratitude when the temptation to be discontent arises.
My hope is that through George’s story, we may be similarly grounded as we celebrate the Christmas story and live each day for the wonder it is.
First and foremost, George Bailey prioritizes family, and he respects his parents deeply. His life’s work is ultimately an honor to his father.
His trust in his father is established early in the film, as an angel explains George’s life story to his guardian angel, Clarence. The angels look at a scene of George as a boy, working in a drug store for a man named Mr. Gower. One day, Mr. Gower receives a telegram informing him of his son’s death, and he falls into a distraught, drunken stupor. He goes to fill a prescription for a patient but puts poison in the bottle instead of the correct medicine. George sees the telegram and puts all these pieces together, but he can’t reason with Mr. Gower. He’s sent off to deliver the poison, and on his way out, he looks up at a sign by the door: “ASK DAD — HE KNOWS.” George takes off running to the Building & Loan, his father’s business, to seek his counsel.
George walks in on his father, Peter Bailey (whom George calls “Pop”) meeting with the richest man in town, Mr. Potter, who is pressuring Mr. Bailey to foreclose on mortgages because payments are late.
“Times are bad, Mr. Potter. A lot of these people are out of work,” Mr. Bailey explains. He doesn’t want to foreclose, because “these families have children.”
“They’re not my children,” Potter huffs. “Are you running a business or a charity ward?”
Mr. Bailey pushes, “Mr. Potter, what makes you such a hard-skulled character? You have no family, no children. You can’t begin to spend all the money you’ve got.”
Potter bursts, “So I suppose I should give it to miserable failures like you and that idiot brother of yours to spend for me.” It’s at this moment that George rushes in to defend his father:
“He’s not a failure! You can’t say that about my father!” When his father tries to calm him down, George insists, “You’re not! You’re the biggest man in town! Bigger’n him! Bigger’n everybody!”
Potter’s response is more telling than he realizes: “Gives you an idea of the Baileys.”
The dynamic here and in the town is summarized well in Isaiah 25:4: “You have been a stronghold to the poor, a stronghold to the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat; for the breath of the ruthless is like a storm against a wall.” The Baileys have been a stronghold to the poor of Bedford Falls, a shelter from the ruthless Mr. Potter.
George loves and respects his father and his commitment to being a stronghold, but George doesn’t want that life for himself. When he’s grown up, he temporarily helps his father out at the Building & Loan, but then he’s ready to lay that aside and finally travel, go to college, and start his wonderful life.
At dinner one night, Pop asks George, “Of course, it’s just a hope, but you wouldn’t consider coming back to the Building & Loan, would you?”
“Oh, now, Pop, I couldn’t,” George says. “I couldn’t face being cooped up for the rest of my life in a shabby little office…I’d go crazy. I want to do something big and something important.”
“You know, George,” Pop replies, “I feel that, in a small way, we are doing something important: satisfying a fundamental urge. It’s deep in the race for a man to want his own roof and walls and fireplace, and we’re helping him get those things in our shabby little office.”
George concedes that it’s important work but is sure it’s not what we wants. But, he comes to a major crossroad when Pop has a stroke and the Building & Loan needs a new chairman. At a meeting between the business board and Mr. Potter, who intends to buy out the business and all its clients, George stands up for his father’s character yet again: “You’re right when you say my father was no business man,” he says to Potter, “I know that…But neither you nor anybody else can say anything against his character…He never once thought of himself.” He knew his father’s efforts to help the poor would “make them better citizens”: “People were human beings to him…In my book he died a much richer man than you’ll ever be!” Before storming out, George passionately tells the board, “This town needs this measly one-horse institution, if only to have some place where people can come without crawling to Potter.”
Sharing in his father’s convictions and character, George steps in when the board says they’ll either go on with George as the new chairman, or else make a deal with Potter. George gives up his trip and stays. That becomes the refrain of the entire film: George stays, to the point that the angel Clarence says to his superior, “I know, I know. He didn’t go.” George truly honors and takes over for his father, becoming a servant-leader and patriarch for all of Bedford Falls.
As Bedford Falls and its citizens fall on one hard time after another, going through first the Great Depression and then World War II, George continues to be a stronghold. George gives his trip and college money to his brother Harry, who goes on to have a successful athletic and military career. When there is panic at the bank as the Depression hits, George and Mary give up their honeymoon money to the bank’s clients to keep from closing. In a touching personal scene, the reformed town flirt, Violet, comes to see George before she heads to New York. He supports her in her newfound humility, saying, “It takes a lot of character to leave your home town and start all over again.” She resists accepting money from him, but he insists, “You’re broke, aren’t you? … It’s a loan. That’s my business. Building and Loan. Besides, you’ll get a job. Good luck to you.”
It’s likely George will never see that money again, but that’s not the point. Luke 6:30 says, “Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back.” As generosity characterizes his entire life, George does just that with Violet, and with many others.
In fact, George’s entire business strategy at the Building & Loan can be summed up in the Apostle Paul’s words to the Thessalonians: “Therefore encourage one another and build one another up, just as you are doing” (1 Thess. 5:11). George strives to instill this attitude in the townspeople, telling them at the bank as the financial crisis hits, “You’re thinking of this place all wrong! As if I had the money back in a safe. The money’s not here. Your money’s in Joe’s house…right next to yours. And in the Kennedy house, and Mrs. Macklin’s house, and a hundred others. Why, you’re lending them the money to build, and then, they’re going to pay it back to you as best they can. Now what are you going to do? Foreclose on them?” The townspeople are quite literally “building one another up,” mutually depending on each other, and George reminds them that this is the honorable thing to do.
When George himself comes into crisis, his dedication to these community values will prove to be, to borrow one of his favorite words, wonderful. In the words of a psalmist, “Blessed is the one who considers the poor! In the day of trouble, the LORD delivers him” (Psalm 41:1).
What makes George’s attitude and character truly reminiscent of the Christmas story is that he gives to the point of sacrifice. “Instead of each person watching out for their own good,” the Apostle Paul writes, “watch out for what is better for others” (Phil. 2:4). “And do not forget to do good and to share with others,” the author of Hebrews writes, “for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Heb. 13:6). Finally, in the words of Jesus himself: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
On his quest to honor his father’s name and to save the townspeople of Bedford Falls from being sold into financial servitude to Mr. Potter, George lays down the grand visions he had for his life. This is a beautiful picture (on, admittedly, a very small scale) of what the Son of God did by being born into the world. The Apostle Paul explains,
“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men. And being found in human form, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name.”
Philippians 2:5-9
Everything about the incarnation involved humility and sacrifice on Jesus’ part. With all that He was, Jesus honored His Father’s Name: “I love the Father and do exactly what my Father has commanded me,” He said (John 14:31). When asked if He was hungry, He went so far as to say, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work” (John 4:34). Jesus honored the Father and accomplished the work for which He was set apart and sent: to save His people from servitude to sin. This is the Christmas story, and George Bailey’s story can point us this way.
Of course, George Bailey is not Jesus. Not one of us even comes close. Where Jesus was perfectly able to live and bear our every burden, George is just one broken man—and one who hasn’t been living in personal relationship with God, at that. Stress and disappointment accumulate over a lifetime in George, as each chapter pushes his big dreams farther and farther from view. When a careless moment of George’s Uncle Billy combined with a malicious moment of Mr. Potter’s combine to make George look criminally negligent with the Building and Loan’s finances, George is pushed to the brink. He winds up praying, “God…Dear Father in Heaven, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God.” He ends up giving up hope in this prayer, too, and he winds up on a bridge, contemplating cutting his life off right there.
At this critical moment, George is given a gift, as his guardian angel Clarence comes and shows him what the world would be like if he’d never been born. This journey shows George that while his reality may be a far cry from the dreams he always had, he still and truly has “a wonderful life.” He has literally saved lives; he has been a joy to Mary and has created a family; he has blessed an entire community through his dedicated servant-leadership. Bedford Falls, renamed Pottersville without George, is not the joyful, neighborly place it was when the Bailey stronghold stood as a refuge to the poor.
Thanks to these insights, George is able to refocus his perspective: Instead of counting all the dreams that haven’t come true and the goals that haven’t been met, he learns to take stock of what he does have and to be grateful for each gift, and especially for the gift of life: “I wanna live again,” he cries into his fists back on the bridge. “I wanna live again.”
This past Sunday, in a message on It’s a Wonderful Life, Rev. Terence Gray focused on the gap between expectations and reality, and the disappointment that comes when the two don’t match. Like George Bailey, we’re surprised and disoriented in these moments. But, Terence encouraged, “We serve a God who is not surprised…He sits up high, but he looks down low. He steps into our picture. He steps into our story.” In fictional George Bailey’s case, God “stepped into the story” by sending an angel to save George’s life and change his perspective. In reality, God stepped into our story in a much bigger way. Where there was an enormous, uncrossable gap between who we are and who God is, “Jesus entered into our gap of disappointment, and he died on a cross…Jesus takes our sin and our shame upon himself. Jesus died a terrible death, so that you and I could live a wonderful life.” An important qualifier, he added, “Not an easy life. Not a pain-free life. But a wonderful life.”
This Christmas, that’s the perspective I hope to keep in mind. In fact, this is something I’ve been trying to focus on this season. As I explained it to my sister on my birthday: “I don’t want to try to build my days from the ground up, and then be disappointed when it doesn’t end up looking like it did in my head. I want to receive my days from the top down, and just be amazed and grateful that this is what God knew I needed today.”
Every week during this series, I’ve quoted James 1:17: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.” Each day is one such gift. As the psalmist sings, “This is the day that the LORD has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it” (Ps. 118:24).
During this holiday season, with the inevitable moments of disappointment, frustration, and conflict that come when many different perspectives and values and expectations collide, may we keep this top-down perspective in mind. May we rejoice in the day that the LORD has made—especially the day a Savior stepped into our story to give us a wonderful life.
Up Next: A Charlie Brown Christmas
Sources:
- “Christmas at the Movies. Part 3. It’s a Wonderful Life.” https://ward.church/on-demand/sermons/#/series/99/sermons/962
Discussion Questions:
- What Christmas movie have you seen the most times? Where does It’s a Wonderful Life fall on your scale of favorite Christmas movies? Why?
- The movie, It’s a Wonderful Life, did not do well at the box office in 1946 because people said it was too dark. Pastor Terence relates this to the birth story of Christmas. In what ways is the Christmas story a dark story?
- Read Isaiah 9:2. What are some ways you could see or experience our world (globally and/or locally) as dark and a land of deep darkness?
- What are some practical ways we, as Christians and as the face of the church, help bring light into our world? In our families? At work? In our neighborhood and friend circle?
- In the movie, an angel says that someone on Earth needs help. The other angel asks if the man is sick. The first angel says he is worse than sick; the man is discouraged. Do you agree or disagree that it is worse to be in a place of discouragement than to be physically sick? Explain your thoughts.
- What are some causes of feeling discouraged or disappointed during Christmas? What are some unmet expectations that can contribute to these feelings?
- Have you experienced discouragement or disappointment during the Christmas season? If you are comfortable, please share your experience. Have you had an opportunity to help someone else who is in a dark place during Christmas?
- The movie shows George being caught in the gap between expectations and reality. In our Christian experience, how can we get caught in this same gap? How can we keep from getting discouraged in our faith journey?
- In the movie, the angel shows what George’s world would look like if he’d never been born. This experience gives George a new perspective on what’s meaningful in life. How have you experienced a new perspective on life through your relationship with Jesus?
- What is one moment from this week’s passage / message / movie that helped you to think about Christmas in a fresh way?
- What are some ways we can bring a new perspective to our world? What influence can we have as we move through this Christmas season with its inevitable frustrations, disappointments, and unmet expectations?
- This week, take time to reflect on your own life and the positive influences you have had on others. Thank God for the opportunities you’ve had to bring light to your part of the world.
- Who has been a positive influence or encouragement to you? Thank God for them, and if possible, take time to express your appreciation to them.
Detroit, Reformed. 
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