Our Hope in One Solitary Life

When I was growing up this time of year, my family’s tradition was to read short stories from The Guideposts Christmas Treasury after dinner. I can still remember most of those stories; I even have a niece named after a character in one of them because it touched my sister so much. Being a lover of histories however, most of those stories were lost on me. There were, in fact, only two stories I really liked; one by David Nevin recollecting his wartime experience sheltering in a stable on Christmas Eve, and the second the following excerpt attributed to James Allan Francis entitled One Solitary Life,

He never wrote a book. He never held an office. He never had a family or owned a home. He didn't go to college. He never lived in a big city. He never traveled 200 miles from the place where he was born. He did none of the things that usually accompany greatness. He had no credentials but himself.

He was only 33 when the tide of public opinion turned against him. His friends ran away. One of them denied him. He was turned over to his enemies and went through the mockery of a trial. He was nailed to a cross between two thieves. While he was dying, his executioners gambled for his garments, the only property he had on earth. When he was dead, he was laid in a borrowed grave, through the pity of a friend.

Nineteen centuries have come and gone, and today Jesus is the central figure of the human race. I am well within the mark when I say that 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.

I think that people, to varying degrees, put some hope in great, popular, successful leaders and heroic deeds. If Jesus was just an ordinary man, more than likely he would have stayed an ordinary tradesman for the remainder of his life and been forgotten within a generation or two. If Jesus was an ordinary man, we’d have no reason to put in him our hope for deliverance; but Jesus is God and Man and is the key to our wonderfully creative redemption story which is unlike any other story previously written. As Christians we put our hope into Christ, our ultimate king who was born in a stable and who came to earth to redeem us and make us right with God.