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What if Christmas Never Happened?

Jim Denison
 
Nate Dreyfus is a nine-year-old boy living in Stillwater, Minnesota.  He recently saw a man get out of his car, take off his jacket, and give it to a man on the street.  Inspired, he enlisted the help of family members and put donation boxes in his neighborhood.  Local media soon became involved.  In total, Nate collected 79 coats and $262 for families in need.  He worked with Project Home, the St. Paul Area Council of Churches' initiative which provides shelter to local homeless families.
 
If there had been no Christmas, would these families have received the help they need?
 
You've probably seen a Salvation Army worker collecting donations during the Christmas season outside stores and malls.  Last year, their ministry served 60 million meals and helped 30 million men, women, and children across America.  The Salvation Army was birthed by William Booth to share the love of Jesus with those in need.
 
If there had been no Christmas, would the Salvation Army exist?
 
John Winthrop led British settlers to found the Massachusetts Bay Colony and served as governor for 12 of the colony's first 20 years of existence.  Why did he leave his home for the New World?  "We shall be as a city upon a hill," he told his fellow Pilgrims.  "The eyes of all the people are upon us so that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause him to withdraw his present help from us, we shall be made a story and a byword throughout all the world."
 
If there had been no Christmas, would the Pilgrims have come to America?
 
Stanley Jaki was a Distinguish Professor of Physics.  He noted that "science suffered a stillbirth not only in Greece but in all great ancient cultures" due to belief in "an eternal, cyclic recurrence of everything in a universe which was taken as the ultimate entity."  By contrast, Christianity posited a universe organized by God on rational, discoverable, predictable principles.  According to Jaki, "biblical revelation is not only germane to science—it made the only viable birth of science possible."  
 
If there had been no Christmas, would science as we know it exist?
 
All but two of the first 108 universities founded in America were created and financed by Christian churches and denominations.  Faith-based hospitals and health care systems are found across the nation.  There are approximately 350,000 churches in America serving the spiritual and physical needs of their communities and our culture.
 
If there had been no Christmas, would they exist?
 
This Christmas week, let's thank the One who chose to be born in a cave to peasant parents and received the worship of field hands, who took on our fallen flesh and bore our sins on his sinless soul, who became one of us that we might be one with him.  C. S. Lewis: "We believe that the sun is in the sky at midday in summer not because we can clearly see the sun (in fact, we cannot) but because we can see everything else."
 
 
Publication date: December 23, 2014

 

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