I hope everyone has had a good week and is enjoying their weekend without being too stressed out over the Christmas preparations. It is a very busy time of the year and sometimes it is easy to lose focus on the importance of keeping Christ in Christmas....
Today I would like to share a story from a little tract that I have been carrying around in my Bible for many years. It gets to me every time I read it!
I hope you will enjoy it and it will bring to your heart, as it has mine, the joy and thankfulness we as believers in Him should be experiencing this time of year.
May we all remember the REASON for the SEASON!
"IF CHRIST HAD NOT COME"
A striking Christmas card was once published with the title "If Christ Had Not Come."
It was based upon our Saviour's words "If I had not come."
The card represented a clergyman falling asleep in his study on Christmas morning and dreaming of a world into which Jesus had never come.
In his dream he found himself looking through his home, but there were no little stockings in the chimney corner, no Christmas bells, no wreaths of holly. He walked out on the street, but there was no church, with its spire pointing to Heaven. He came back and sat down in his library, but every book about the Saviour had disappeared.
A ring of the door-bell, and a messenger asked him to visit a poor, dying mother. He hastened with the weeping child, and as he reached the home he sat down and said, "I have something here that will comfort you." He opened his Bible to look for a familiar promise, but it ended with Malachi, and there was no gospel and no promise of hope and salvation, and he could only bow his head and weep with her in deep and bitter despair.
Two days afterward he stood beside her coffin and conducted the funeral service, but there was no message of consolation, no word of a glorious resurrection.
Suddenly he awoke with a start, and a great shout of joy and praise burst from his lips as he heard his choir singing in his church close by:
" O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant;
O come ye, O come ye to Bethlehem.
Come and behold Him, born the King of angels.
O come let us adore Him, Christ the Lord."
Let us be glad and rejoice because "Christ HAS come."
"This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners...." {1 Timothy 1:15}
Today He stands knocking at your heart's door, asking that you-the sinner- will let Him in. "Wherefore He IS able to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever liveth...." {Hebrews 7: 25} - Adapted from Streams in the Desert
The Lord bless you and make you a blessing!