Another Christmas, come and gone.
Or has it, really?
Can it come again before next Christmas?
It, or more truly, He, did came back for A.J.
Let me explain.
Dr. A.J. Gordon was a preacher in Boston, Massachusetts many years ago. One Saturday night he was exhausted, worn out from working on his Sunday sermon. Falling asleep, Gordon dreamed that he saw a stranger walking into his church on Sunday morning. The man sat down while Gordon was preaching. It was one of those dreams where you feel like you are really there when it’s happening. Gordon could later recall the exact pew where the man in the dream was sitting.
Something about this man was different—but a good kind of different, a different which made him attractive to everyone. Although Gordon could not see the man’s face, he did later remember thinking during the dream that the man seemed serious, contemplative, like a man of great sorrow. The awareness of the man’s presence brought Gordon to a respectful attention, although the man didn’t demand it. And as Gordon preached, he couldn’t take his eyes off the man.
When the service was over, Gordon desperately tried to reach the visitor before he got away. Gordon sashayed past other people to get to the stranger, but he had slipped away before Gordon could get to him. Then, grabbing the man who had been sitting next to the stranger, Gordon asked if he knew who the guest was. The man casually replied, “Jesus of Nazareth.”
Gordon was visibly agitated with the man for letting Jesus go, but this man who had been right next to Jesus said nonchalantly, “Oh, do not be troubled. He has been here today, and no doubt will come again.”
Later, Gordon reflected on this dream and the words of the man who had sat next to Jesus: “One thought…lingered in my mind with something of comfort and more of awe: ‘He has been here today, and no doubt will come again’; and mentally repeating those words as one regretfully meditating on a vanished vision, I awoke and it was a dream. No, it was not a dream. It was a vision of the deepest reality, a miniature of actual ministry.”
The dream stuck with Gordon, giving him a profound sense of the presence of Christ. It spurred him on in his ministry at his church and even led him to found Gordon College.
The words are worth pondering: “Oh, do not be troubled. He has been here today, and no doubt will come again.”
Perhaps you know, cognitively, that Christ came. You believe there was that person back there, in Bethlehem. But you seem to have missed him once again this year, here in your home.
Maybe it’s the same each year for you, just a baby in a manger. You’re like the little girl whose parents took her to see the Christmas decorations. One church even had a live manger scene with a real baby. “Isn’t it lovely,” the mother said, to which the little girl agreed. “But one thing bothers me,” the child continued, “Baby Jesus is the same size every year.”
Perhaps for you, it’s the same-o, same-o: He is the same Baby Jesus each year.
But maybe you’ve actually caught a glimpse of Jesus, only to have him slip away. And though you’re reluctant to admit it, you haven’t seen a trace of Him in years.
We would do well to repeat the words of the man in Gordon’s dream: “Oh, do not be troubled. He has been here today, and no doubt will come again.”
He is here for you today, right here, right now, to stand beside you, not as a baby in a manger, although he was that, but as the Risen Lord, the King of Kings, the Spirit sent from God, who gently comes alongside us, taking us by the hand, and walking the unknown future with us, even as this same Jesus waits for us on the Other Side.