A Gift From One Born Long Ago…

“Just outside our door is a day waiting. . .,” wrote Celia Caroline Cole, “. . . a free, glorious spirit wanting to come in and give to us its gifts . . . of joy . . . of kindness . . . of deep experience . . . wanting to be seen and understood. Somewhere there will be tall, pointed pines standing up out of the snow, black against the moonlight, remembering. And somewhere there will be excited children asleep . . . And happy people. And lonely people. And people who expect no gifts and can give none . . . people who have lost their faith. Sated people for whom life has lost its meaning. But . . . there is something the Day can give to us, if only we’ll receive it a gift from one born long, long ago . . . It waits within us . . . to be understood, to be used beautifully, to change life for us from darkness into light . . . from weakness into strength . . . No matter who we are, there it is calling to us, like the angel to the shepherds of old, ‘Fear Not! Good tidings of great joy! . . .

“Two thousand years ago there lived and died [one] who saw the unseen, who cared enough to die on a lonely hill that we might some day understand. He lived a simple life, he said the things he really thought and nothing that he did not mean, he did not hide himself with words and worldly ways but drew from the depths of him . . . He was never understood even by those he loved best; . . . nobody really . . . saw what he saw, or knew what he know . . . And he died deserted . . . And yet here he is. Twenty centuries later, . . . his birthday a universal holiday, his words the truest philosophy of living the world has ever known, . . . a risen Saviour of mankind . . . If you had been there when that ‘great light shone,’ would you have gone back unchanged to your trinkety life? . . . Wouldn’t [it] have changed your whole life?”¹

Shouldn’t it now?

“And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!”² “I know that my Redeemer liveth.”³ “May God bless us everyone.”