One Solitary Life

Did you see the news story this week where Italian scientists announced the Shroud of Turin- the cloth that supposedly covered Jesus face in the tomb- is most likely authentic?  Once again those seeking to dismiss the Christ as a myth instead find evidence to support the biblical stories. It seems to be in vogue in 2011 to use Jesus and his followers as the focal point of jokes and and intellectual attacks.  The world sure can feel like a dark place.


This Sunday we will celebrate the coming of the Light into a world filled with darkness.  Jesus came to us as a baby, but it was his life, death and resurrection that would forever change us all.  Today I invite you to a Christmas tradition on this blog.  Read these words of faith, adopted from a 1926 sermon by Dr. James Allen Francis, and consider the full meaning of Christmas and who the babe of Bethlehem would become.  Not a myth.  Not a legend.  The savior of the world.

He was born in an obscure village, the son of a peasant woman.  He grew up in another village, where he worked in a carpenter's shop until he was thirty. Then for three years he became a wandering preacher. 

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a house. He didn't go to college. He never visited a big city. He never travelled two hundred miles from the place where he was born. He did none of those things one usually associates with greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only thirty-three when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. He was turned over to his enemies and went through a mockery of a trial. He was executed by the state. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead he was laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend. 

Twenty centuries have come and gone, and today he is the central figure of the human race and the leader of mankind's progress. All the armies that ever marched, all the navies that ever sailed, all the parliaments that ever sat, all the kings that ever reigned, put together, have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that One Solitary Life. 


My Deliverer is Coming...