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There was an infidel soldier of the Middle Ages who hated the Bible and all sacred things. He grew so fierce and mad in his defiance that he determined to test the power of the Christian’s God. So he went out into a field, armed as if for battle. He threw his glove down on the ground as a challenge. Then he looked up into the heavens and angrily cried: “God, if there be a God, I defy thee here and now to mortal combat. If thou indeed art, put forth thy power of which they pretended priests make such boast.” As he spoke he saw a piece of paper fluttering in the air just above his head. It fell at his feet. He took it up, and on it read these words: “God is love.” Overcome by this strange response to his mad challenge, he broke his sword in token of surrender, and kneeling upon the fragments, gave his life thenceforth to the service of that God who he had just before defied.
So it was that this world hated God and defied him; and so it was that the answer came from heaven to all his defiance and rebellion, “God is love.”
This was the message that came wafted down on the still air, in the angels’ song, that night when Christ was born. Cold was the world. Shut were men’s hearts against God. The infidel knight hurling his wild defiance in the face of heaven is scarcely too awful a picture to us to illustrate the attitude of the chosen people toward the God who had so blessed them. Yet, to all this disobedience, this rejection, this defiance, the answer was, not judgment, swift and terrible, but he wonderful gift whose coming the angels sang. The response was, “On earth peace, good will to men.” And it is the same today. To all men’s hate and rejection the message ever comes, “God is love.”