As Christmas approaches once again, how glad we are for this reminder that the Light of the world has come! And as the darkness deepens on the earth, we can rejoice that the time is near when our dear Lord will come again. But it is an urgent time, for the fields of the earth are white with harvest and the laborers are few as time is running out. As I write this, I am reminded of the words of an old hymn: "I love to tell the story ... to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love."

Yes, to us it's an old, old story perhaps so familiar that it no longer thrills our hearts as when we first heard it. But Christmas is happening for the first time all over the world as that "old" story is finally reaching ears and hearts that have never heard it even once. And it is still received with the same awe and wonder of that first Christmas so long ago. But it is hard for us to imagine as we read that story from all our many versions of the Bible that there still are countless millions without even a single word of Scripture.

God says in Hebrews that every word of God is alive and powerful and in Second Timothy that all of His word is profitable. I know my own Bible is marked and dated and tear stained with all the special passages God used to reach me at various times of my life. But there are many unmarked parts that I usually just gloss over. Sometimes I even wonder why God included them. Through our work at Wycliffe we are discovering that God, who knows all men intimately, wrote certain parts of Scripture to reach people very different from us.

God promised His Word will achieve the purpose for which He sent it. The main purpose is that we may believe Jesus is the Christ. What Truth He uses is His to determine. It was the genealogy of Jesus that convinced the Balangao people. In their own words, "You mean He was a real man!" The story of the Samaritan woman at the well in John chapter 4 convinced the Mazatec people. We have all gleaned much from that story, but the part the Lord used to reach them is irrelevant to us. The Mazatec exclaimed, "What kind of man would cause a woman to forget her water jar?"

I wonder how many other passages God wrote for a particular people that are still not in the hands of those who will mark them and stain them with their tears? At this Christmas time, as you enjoy the "old, old" story, will you join us in prayer that God's saving Word will reach to the uttermost parts of the earth and that Jesus will be born anew each day through the power of his Word?

We've enclosed a sheet listing all of the New Testaments nearing completion for 1993 to 1994. Take some time in the new year to rejoice over them and pray for the critical final stages when the enemy tries so hard to hinder and stop the work. And please remember those still waiting in darkness for God's special Word to come to them for Jesus' sake.