Christmas Time and Dad
Eighty-nine years ago this past Thursday my Dad was born. The impact that he made upon my life is monumental. Come spring, he will have left earth for heaven fourteen years ago. I miss him everyday.
Today, I would share with you lessons and beliefs that Father taught me growing up. The last point of this “Pastor’s Word” is going to have a surprise ending.
Things my Dad taught me:
1. Wear no man’s collar; follow God at all cost.
I loved the old world language of my Dad. He used expressions anchored in Anglo-Saxon, Scotts-Irish, and early/rural Americana. He would encourage my brother and me to be the man God wanted us to be and never cower to any man, especially at the price of integrity. He often quoted the dying words of the ancient martyr, Hugh Latimer.
Hugh Latimer was famous as a preacher. He was Bishop of Worcester in the time of King Henry, but resigned in protest against the King's refusal to allow the Protestant reforms that Latimer desired. Latimer's sermons speak little of doctrine; he preferred to urge men to upright living and devoutness in prayer. But when Mary came to the throne, he was arrested, tried for heresy, and burned together with his friend Nicholas Ridley. His last words at the stake are well known: “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day light such a candle in England as I trust by God's grace shall never be put out.”
2. Preach Jesus!
Dad exhorted me again and again to lift up Christ. Christ is the answer to every problem known to man. Dad had a mentor who became my mentor as well; he was like a spiritual grandfather to me. I was encouraged by Dad to study his life and ministry. I am speaking of Dr. Robert G. Lee. Jesus was the main theme of Dr. Lee’s ministry. I love these two quotes on the person of Christ by Dr. Lee, “This is He who as the Ancient of Days became the Infant of Days. Jesus Who, in creation, ‘made all things—in incarnation was made flesh.’ Making entrance into the world He created, in the strange homespun clothes of one who had nowhere to lay His head, the pre-existent Christ was ‘made of woman,’ was embodied in human flesh, demonstrated in human life, exemplified in human action, crystallized in human form.” Again he said of our Lord, “Jesus of Nazareth, Son of Man without sin and Son of God with power, is literature’s loftiest ideal, philosophy’s highest personality, criticism’s supremest problem, theology’s fundamental doctrine, spiritual religion’s cardinal necessity. Personally, socially, politically, educationally, economically, Jesus is the only hope of this head-dizzy, soul-sick, sin-smitten, war-cursed world. He is the standard of measurement, the scale of weights, the test of character for the whole universe.”
3. Never lose the wonder!
As an old man, Gypsy Smith, famous evangelist from England, was asked the secret of his ministry. He replied, “I never lost the wonder!” Although Dad grew far beyond his roots, having acquired a Doctor’s Degree in Bible languages, helped to establish churches in America, India, Africa, and Korea and taught seminary, I can say he never lost the wonder. It is evidenced in the surprise ending of this article.
Dad was a phlegmatic realist, yet, he defied logic, when it came to exercising belief in the God of the impossible. Every year around Christmas time he would constantly refer to and quote the famous letter written in a New York newspaper by a Baptist minister’s son named Francis P. Church. It was in answer to a letter from a young eight-year-old named Virginia O’Hanlon. Allow me to share with you Virginia’s letter and her answer as printed originally in The New York Sun in 1897:
Dear Editor—
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy. Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
God bless you and Merry Christmas!
- Pastor Pope -