My Christmas Discovery

By Norman Vincent Peale

Some of my most impressionable years were spent in Cincinnati. I still remember the huge Christmas tree in Fountain Square--the gleaming decorations, the streets ringing with the sound of carols. Up on East Liberty Street where we lived, my mother always had a Christmas tree with real candles on it, magical candles which, combined with the fir tree, gave off a forest aroma, unique and unforgettable.
One Christmas Eve when I was 12, I was out with my minister father doing some late Christmas shopping. He had me loaded down with packages and I was tired and cross. I was thinking how good it would be to get home when a beggar--a bleary-eyed, unshaven, dirty old man--came up to me, touched my arm with a hand like a claw, and asked for money. He was so repulsive that instinctively I recoiled.
Softly my father said, “Norman, it's Christmas Eve. You shouldn't treat a man that way.”
I was unrepentant. “Dad,” I said, “he's nothing but a bum.”
My father stopped. “Maybe he hasn't made much of himself, but he's still a child of God.” He then handed me a dollar--a lot of money for those days and for a preacher's income. “I want you to take this and give it to that man,” he said. “Speak to him respectfully. Tell him you are giving it to him in Christ's name.”
“Oh, Dad!” I protested. “I can't do anything like that.”
My father's voice was firm. “Go and do as I tell you.”
So, reluctant and resisting, I ran after the old man and said, “Excuse me, sir. I give you this money in the name of Christ.”
He stared at the dollar bill, then looked at me in utter amazement. A wonderful smile came to his face, a smile so full of life and beauty that I forgot that he was dirty and unshaven. I forgot that he was ragged and old. With a gesture that was almost courtly, he took off his hat. Graciously he said, “And I thank you, young sir, in the name of Christ.”
All my irritation, all my annoyance faded away. The street, the houses, everything around me suddenly seemed beautiful because I had been part of a miracle that I have seen many times since--the transformation that comes over people when you think of them as children of God, when you offer them love in the name of a Baby born two thousand years ago in a stable in Bethlehem, a Person who still lives and walks with us and makes His presence known.
That was my Christmas discovery that year--the gold of human dignity that lies hidden in every living soul, waiting to shine through if only we'll give it a chance.

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