True Gratefulness
December 8, 2024
Dr. Paul Cannings
Christmas is the most beautiful time of the year. Houses are decorated with lights; Christmas trees are decorated inside homes; ornaments and the like; people’s cars are decorated; the malls are filled with items that represent Christmas to them, and the music of Christmas plays regularly. What was Christmas like for Christ? What did God’s love mean for the Giver of His love?
Britisher Geoffrey T. Bull, a missionary to Tibet, was cold, exhausted, and hungry. Communists had seized him following their takeover of China in 1949, and his future was bleak. His captors drove him day and night across frozen mountains until he despaired of life. Late one afternoon, he staggered into a small village where he was given an upstairs room, swept clean and warmed by a small charcoal brazier.
After a meager supper, he was sent downstairs to feed the horses. It was very dark and very cold. He clambered down the notched tree trunk to find himself in pitch blackness. His boots squished in the manure and straw on the floor. The fetid smell of animals was nauseating. The horses sighed wearily, tails drooping, yet the missionary expected to be kicked any moment. Geoffrey, cold, weary, lonely, and ill, begins to feel sorry for himself.
“Then as I continued to grope my way in the darkness,” he later wrote, “it suddenly flashed into my mind. What’s today? I thought for a moment. In traveling, the days had become a little muddled in my mind. Suddenly, it came to me. ‘It’s Christmas Eve.’ I stood suddenly still in that Oriental manger. To think that my Savior was born in a place like this. To think that He came all the way from heaven to some wretched eastern stable, and what is more to think that He came for me. How men beautify the cross, and the crib, as if to hide the fact that at birth we resigned Him to the stench of beasts and at death exposed Him to the shame of rogues. “I returned to the warm, clean room which I enjoyed even as a prisoner bowed to thankfulness and worship” (Geoffrey T. Bull, When Iron Gates Yield (Chicago: Moody Press, n.d.), 158–159. 2 Morgan, Robert J.: Nelson & #39’s Complete Book of Stories, Illustrations, and Quotes. electronic ed. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers, 2000, S. 110).
“The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly. I am the good shepherd; the good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep.” (John 10:10-11; NASU)
God’s gift to us, and for us, far outweighs any gift we can provide to Him. This is why this is a season of thanksgiving that should result in `thanksliving.’