A LITTLE BOY stood before the picture of his absent father, and then turned to his mother and wistfully said, “I wish Father would step out of this picture.”
This little boy expressed the deepest yearning of the human heart. We who have gazed upon the picture of God in nature are grateful, but not satisfied. We want our Father to step out of the impersonal picture and meet us as a Person. “The Impersonal laid no hold on my heart,” says Tulsi Das, the great poet of India. It never does, for the human heart is personal and wants a Personal response.
“Why won’t principles do? Why do we need a personal God?” someone asks. Well, suppose you go to a child crying for its mother and say, “Don’t cry, little child; I am giving to you the principle of motherhood.” Would the tears dry and the face light up? Hardly. This child would brush aside your principle of motherhood and cry for its mother. We all want, not a principle nor a picture, but a Person.
The Father has stepped out of the picture. The Word has become flesh. That is the meaning of Christmas. Jesus is Immanuel—God with us. He is the personal approach from the unseen. We almost gasp as the Picture steps out of the frame. We did not dare dream God was like Christ. But He is. Just as I analyze chemically the tiny sunbeam and discover in it the chemical makeup of the vast sun, so I look at the character and life of Jesus, and I know what God’s character is like. He is Christlike.
“You have an advantage,” said Dr. Hu Shih, the father of the Renaissance Movement in China, “in that all the ideas in Christianity have become embodied in a Person.” Yes, and the further the advantage of our faith is this: the Christmas Word must become flesh in me. I too must become the Word made flesh. I must be a miniature Christmas.
Gracious Father, as Thou hast stepped out of the picture, help me this day to step out of the picture and let someone see in me the meaning of a Christian. May I be the Christmas message. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: The Christian spirit is the Christmas spirit, extended through the whole year. It is the attitude toward every person, the atmosphere of every act.
