When a baby is born, people look at the child and wonder…
They wonder at the marvel of a new life, yes.
But they also wonder about what this new-born will be… what he will become.
No doubt, the people who visited Mary and Joseph to see the new-born Child must have asked themselves such a question.
Centuries later, this is what has been written about this ordinary-looking baby and most extraordinary human being.
ONE SOLITARY LIFE
Here is a man who was born in an obscure village
the child of a peasant woman.
He grew up in another obscure village.
He worked in a carpenter shop until he was thirty,
and then for three years he was an itinerant preacher.
He never wrote a book.
He never held an office.
He never owned a home.
He never had a family.
He never went to college.
He never set foot inside a big city.
He never traveled two hundred miles from the place where he was born.
He never did one of the things that usually accompany greatness.
He had no credentials but Himself.
While still a young man, the tide of popular opinion turned against him.
His friends ran away.
One of them denied him.
He was turned over to his enemies.
He went through the mockery of a trial.
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves.
His executioners gambled for the only piece of property he had on earth while He was dying –
and that was his coat.
When He was dead, He was taken down and laid in a borrowed grave through the pity of a friend.
Nineteen wide centuries have come and gone
and today He is the centerpiece of the human race
and the leader of the column of progress.
I am far within the mark when I say that
all the armies that ever marched,
and all the navies that ever were built,
and all the parliaments that ever sat,
and all the kings that ever reign,
put together have not affected the life of man upon this earth
as powerfully as has that ONE SOLITARY LIFE. James A Francis, D.D.