CHICAGO, IL (December 22, 2002) – The Department of Communication of the Evangelical Covenant Church (ECC) receives more than 200 local church newsletters each month and occasionally reprints devotionals. We offer the following from Associate Pastor James Walsh of Mission Covenant Church in Poplar, Wisconsin. He told his congregation that “growing up I had a lot of heroes” before describing how he nearly missed meeting one of them as part of his Christmas season devotional.
By James Walsh
One day . . . a neighbor, a boy in my class at school, got my mother on the phone. “Mrs. Walsh, you’ll never guess what,” the boy said. “John Glenn is at my house! I told him James lives next door. He wants to come to your house. Wants to see James.”
Then something went terribly wrong. My mother did not know who John Glenn was. Like the Pharoah who ‘knew not Joseph,’ she had never heard of him. She thought he was some kid I went to school with who wanted to come over and play. My mother said (to my neighbor), “James is at piano lessons. You’ll have to tell John he can come over and play some other day.”
When I got home, my mother told me somebody named John Glenn had been next door, had wanted to come over and she told him maybe some other time. I wanted to call the social services people. Take my mother away. That afternoon I was in a deep depression.
Around 5 p.m. there was a knock at the door. When I answered it, there stood John Glenn – United States Marine, NASA astronaut, U.S. Senator. I beheld his glory – the glory of an American hero, full of power and glory.
He (John Glenn) had stopped by our neighbors’ before a speaking engagement, which is when my friend called. After he had finished speaking, although he was busy, he decided to make a stop before he went home. He came all the way back to our neighborhood. He tracked down my house. He knocked on my door. “I didn’t want you to take it out on the piano teacher,” he said.
To a 10-year-old kid, the glory of John Glenn wasn’t that he was an American hero or a famous senator. Glory was that one day he took time and came knocking on my door. One day, he came just for me.
“The Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen His glory,” the Apostle John wrote (John 1:14). We beheld his glory when he came to ordinary, fallen human beings. For the “glory of God” is not just his power and might and majesty. His glory is that he would come to this corner of the universe – to this insignificant planet (and) to a ragged people he could not bring himself to discard. His glory is that one day he laid aside his majesty and bliss and came knocking at your door.
One day, he came just for you.
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