Presents and Presence

The story that I am about to relate is a true story that happened on December 25, 1956. I am not proud of the story. I think back on it with deep regret. I decided to share it because it happened on Christmas day and pertained to a Christmas present.

I grew up very poor in terms of money. We basically didn't have any. We had a farm with plenty of land. We grew the majority of our food. Animals provided meat, milk and butter. At Christmas time any presents we received were practical things, things like an apple and an orange, maybe a couple of pieces of hard candy and an article of clothing such as an under shirt.

On Christmas morning of 1956 my mother presented me with a Bible for a Christmas present. This is the regrettable part of the story. When my mother gave me the Bible, I threw it in the floor and said, "I don't want a Bible." Sadly, I was voicing what I really felt. At 12 years old, I wanted a bicycle, a baseball glove or a baseball. I wanted the things that other kids received.

I can still remember the look of hurt in my mother's eyes. I never read the Bible. It was stored away somewhere in our house. Eight years later, at the age of 20, I received Jesus Christ into my heart and life. It was not on Christmas day. It was in the spring of the year when Cedar Creek Baptist Church conducted a series of revival services. The speaker was an Indian preacher from North Carolina.

Everything changed in a glorious way that Monday night. What I received that Monday night in 1964 was more than a present; it was a presence, the very presence of the living, resurrected Christ.

I went home that night after the revival service, went to sleep and got up and went to work Tuesday morning at Sonoco Products Company. I told my co-workers that I had become a Christian.

The second thing I did as a Christian after telling others about my experience of receiving Christ was to obtain a Bible and start reading it. It was not the Bible that I had thrown in the floor on Christmas day in 1956, but it was a Bible.

I love the Bible today. It is nothing less than truth without any mixture of error, and, yes, it is infallible and trustworthy. The theme of this website is a statement of how I view the Bible. My website theme is "The Unequalled Power and Potential of Biblical Truth."

I rejected the present my mother tried to give me on December 25, 1956, but praise God, I received the presence that God wants to give to all of us by sending His Son to be our Savior. The presence of Christ in my life turned rejection into love for the present my mother gave to me many years ago.

I pray that Christ is a living presence in your life. If He is a living presence in your life, no doubt you love the Bible.