Devotionals

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YES, VIRGINIA, THERE IS A……….
JESUS!
In my youth I remember always hearing the phrase “Yes, Virginia, There is a Santa Claus” In the ignorance of youth I associated it with someone trying to prove to the state I love so dear that there was in fact a Kris Kringle. In later years I learned that Virginia was actually Virginia O’Hanlon, who had written a letter to the editor asking if Jolly Old St. Nicholas was real.[1] Through the years, The Jolly Old Elf, Santa, has been able to remain a constant of the Christmas Season. Jesus, however, has been all but barred from the holiday. Merry Christmas has been replaced with “Season’s Greetings.” Christmas trees are now, in many places, “Holiday Trees.” Nativity scenes can no longer be placed on public grounds, while images of Santa and the reindeer are allowed to fly through the city.
If Virginia O’Hanlon were to write her letter today it might go something like this:
Yes, Virginia, There is a Jesus

Dear Editor—

I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no JESUS. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.” Please tell me the truth, is there a Jesus?

Virginia O’Hanlon

Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see: “blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed (John 20:29).” They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known (1 Corinthians 13:12). All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.

Yes, Virginia, there is a Jesus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy: “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Jesus: “In him was life; and the life was the light of men!” (John 1:4). It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then (Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven, Matthew 18:3), no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.

Not believe in Jesus! You might as well not believe in Santa. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Jesus, but that is no sign that there is no Jesus. The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see: “For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible” (Colossians 1:16). Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.

You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart. Only faith, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond: “By a new and living way, which he hath consecrated for us, through the veil, that is to say, his flesh” (Hebrews 10:20). Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding

No Jesus! Thank God! he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood. “And he shall reign over the house of Jacob for ever; and of his kingdom there shall be no end” (Luke 1:33).

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