Malachi 4:5-6 “See, I will send you the prophet Elijah before that great and dreadful Day of the LORD comes. He will turn the hearts of the fathers to their children, and the hearts of the children to their fathers; or else I will come and strike the land with a curse.”
Very early one Christmas morning a small boy tiptoed downstairs. All night he had been dreaming of the gorgeously decorated tree groaning under the weight of presents. Imagine his shocked amazement at seeing none of these things, just the same old furniture arranged in the same drab way. Yet there was a different and uncanny atmosphere. It was like a fog, heavy and oppressing.
The boy rushed out into the dark street. There the same gloomy atmosphere greeted him. No smiles on the faces of people passing by. No one called out to him, “Merry Christmas!” People silently plodded along wearily and aimlessly. He looked at the shop windows. The colorful lights and decorations of Christmas Eve had disappeared. Nothing was in the shops now but food and clothing and implements, the bare essentials.
He came to the church, at least to the vacant lot where the church had once stood. No church now. No school either. Instead, a prison, the biggest, grimmest prison he had ever seen. “ What’s wrong?” he screamed.
Dazed, he turned around and started for home. Suddenly he stumbled over something lying in the snow. It was a man, not dead, but unconscious, blue with the cold, lying there like an old bundle of rags. Excitedly the boy began running to the hospital for help. But, even as he ran, he knew that no hospital would be there. No Christmas tree, no cheeriness, no charity, no hope, no anything. Sick at heart, he stopped running and turned to trudge home.
Once home, he flung himself on a chair and reached for the Bible to read the story now become a mockery. He thumbed aimlessly through the Old Testament, suddenly remembering that Matthew and Luke were in the New Testament. But his Bible ended with the prophecy of Malachi. Nothing after that but blank pages and one quotation printed in a tiny footnote, the words of Jesus, “…if I had not come…” (John 15:22 NIV)
