I’ve been thinking lately of an Advent revelation which came upon me suddenly, like fever and chills, several years ago. I was not expecting an encounter with God as I sat in my car, stalled in holiday traffic with three kids in back. However, the Spirit blows where it will. Noah had recently turned eight years old, Peggy was five and Justus was a baby in the car seat. We were listening to an old cassette tape of Pat Boone narrating Bible stories when the Christmas story came on for the tenth time that season. Suddenly, a sob rose up in my throat.
I whirled around in my seat, face streaked with tears and locked eyes with my young children. “This is how I know it is all true! The Bible must be true. Most stories, when you have heard them a dozen times, get old and boring. But I’ve heard hundreds of times and I always learn something new. Now that I’m grown up, I cannot hear the Christmas story without crying. Do you understand?” I asked with an urgent passion in my voice.
I am not sure if, in their youth, my kids could grasp what I had just realized myself. But something gripped us all in that moment on North Lamar. Noah and Peggy looked up at me with big, solemn eyes, and replied, “Yes, we understand.”
The truth of the gospel is not merely a matter of historical fact; it is a revelation of the Godhead. Fantasy may excite the imagination, but it cannot transform the soul. Lies will damage us, shrinking our hearts and minds. But Truth is found in the Person of Christ, and we will never plumb its depth.