This morning I used a story at the end of my sermon, and in case you missed it I wanted to summarize it here. Several years ago, a man wrote a newspaper columnist saying: “Is there any place where we can borrow a little boy three or four years old for the Christmas holidays? We have a nice home and would take wonderful care of him and bring him back safe and sound. We used to have a little boy but he couldn’t stay, and we miss him so much when Christmas comes.”
The columnist ran the letter and added this note: “If anyone has a little boy to lend over Christmas, write to this column as early as possible, marking ‘Christmas’ on the outside of the envelope.”
As remarkable as it sounds, someone answered the letter. There was a woman whose husband had died in combat, leaving her a little boy to raise alone. She answered the ad, and found that the writer was a widower whose wife and little boy had both died the same year. He was now living with his mother.
That Christmas, Mrs. N. H. Muller and her boy had a great day with the lonely man and his mother. In fact, it was a joy that continued Christmas after Christmas — “because,” she wrote, “this man became my husband.”
I love that story because it reminds us that God loaned us a little boy on the first Christmas, and that story, too, ends happily. I’m always on the outlook for good stories to borrow and incorperate into my messages. That one came from an old book I picked up at a sale–“The Guideposts Christmas Treasury,” published in 1972. The article was written by Mrs. N. H. Muller. If you’d like a copy of my entire Christmas Sunday message from Luke 1-3, just punch here. Also the little three-year-old boy in the above picture is my grandson Elijah!