Week 52—Sunday Psalm 103:2-5
Psalm 103:2-5
WHAT JESUS CHRIST MEANS TO ME
We come to our closing week together. The whole of what we are saying in the book is that teaching must become testimony, or it ceases to be teaching. So I close this book with a testimony.
When the attack upon Pearl Harbor took place, I was in Urbana, Illinois, and was to speak that afternoon in a university convocation on “Peace.” I had just come from weeks and months of efforts at Washington to head off the war. As I walked down the steps of the hotel on my way to the convocation I heard the excited voice of a radio announcer telling of the attack upon Pearl Harbor. Here I was on the way to speak on peace and peace was gone. I announced to the great crowd what I had heard over the radio, news to most of them, a shock to all. I told that shocked audience that obviously I could not speak on peace, for peace was gone, but I would speak on, “What Christ means to me.” When that world of peace which we had tried to build up had crashed, did anything remain? Yes, all the values, the real values, of my life were intact, for “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and for ever” (Heb. 13:8). When things crashed, he remained.
A thousand students stayed that afternoon to know the steps to find Christ and to take them, for they knew that they could not walk out into a shaken world of war without an Unshakable Center.
The war was won, but the peace has not been, so we are still in a very shaken world. So I give my witness again in this shaken situation as to what Christ means to me. It seems the only befitting way to end this book. For unless the message of this book has become real to the messenger—real in experience—it all ends in the Word become word. I will tell you how it became flesh in me—imperfectly of course, but real as far as it has gone.
O Lord and Savior, may the message we bring be not merely a message, but a message embodied in the messenger. May what we say be deep speaking to deep, heart speaking to heart, and may at the end we see Christ and not the messenger. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I am grateful that I, a very imperfect follower of a very perfect Lord, have Someone to talk about, for he is my message.