by David Melton
Dragging out the ornaments from last year and seeing the end of the calendar gets me thinking about the first Christmas gift I can remember. I was five or six and my grandmother gave me a basketball. She just wrapped it in wrapping paper — no box, no decoy. It still makes me smile — it was just what I wanted.
While I am remembering, I think I will sit here and wait for images from life at Boston Baptist College to come around from the year now almost completed.
I remember being in Cairo, Egypt, on a study trip. Dave Beauregard, our student body president, stood beside me at Cairo’s “most important tourist site,” the grave of missionary William Borden, in the heart of the world’s largest Muslim city. “Only faith in Christ can explain such a life,” reads Borden’s gravestone. We were speechless. I don’t think either of us will be the same again. “No Reserves. No Retreats. No Regrets.” Dave puts that on the bottom of every email he sends me.
I remember seeing Joanne come back to campus in August and she was crying. I automatically presumed something bad was up. Then she told me how happy she was because this year she was going to get to live on campus! She was so excited! I know it had nothing to do with our buildings. Joanne’s joy had everything to do with how good it is to have a college family that loves Jesus no-holds-barred. A good gift.
I remember a lecture in my course about the historical evidence for Jesus from last winter. We watched a DVD in which right in the middle of a frontal attack on the credibility of the New Testament is a 20-second clip of one of my old Harvard profs acknowledging that the Christology hymn in Philippians 2 simply has to be a product of Christians in the first decade after Jesus died. I kept rewinding it and watching it over again! At first my students thought I had finally fried all my cerebral wiring! Then they realized that it was a party — a truth party — and we laughed and cheered together. Rebekah was on the front row laughing. Another gift.
During 2010 I remember my last talk with Bro. Boyle before he graduated to heaven. I remember watching Ken Gillming cry preparing for a doctrine class because he was so moved by the greatness of God! I remember seeing one of our Haitian alumni, Jean Abel Jean, for the first time after he came back after the earthquake. I remember “Q” telling me about somebody he had just won to the Lord. I remember picking weeds with Ryan on the Walk of Light.
Sure, 2010 has given me a few headaches — mostly financial ones. But right now all the gifts have me smiling like Christmas morning. When a gift is good enough, sometimes you don’t need a box. It is what it is. Merry Christmas everybody