"You...received me as Christ Jesus"

I am currently reading Sermons in Solitary Confinement by Richard Wurmbrand.  This books was recommended to me by a missionary friend and I have been, at times, overwhelmed by the pathos of these sermons.  Being a lay-preacher in the Presbyterian Church, this little story told by Richard Wurmbrand caught my attention. May we (regardless of our denominational affiliation) never become disinterested in Christ!

I was once looking for the Presbyterian pastor in a certain town. I went to the church, but the caretaker told me that he lived some distance away. Some boys were playing in the churchyard. Overhearing our conversation, one of them offered to show me the pastor's house. While we were walking along, I asked him if he believed in Christ. The boy, aged fourteen, decidedly answered: "No." I asked him why. He replied in his childish manner: "I believe that if God created this good and meek and loving Jesus of two thousand years ago in Palestine, in whom we are meant to trust, he must have created some little Jesus in every generation in every place, so that in looking at the little Jesus we may believe in the big one. But I have never met a little Jesus. I am a poor child. My father is a drunkard and beats me. My mother is a washer-woman and has no time for me. I have never had a good suit. Nobody has ever bought me chocolate or sweets. I have had no toys. If God is almighty, why did he only make Jesus once? An almighty God could make many Jesuses. Then it would be easy to believe." I asked him again: "But isn't your pastor a Jesus?" The answer was as decided as the first: "No." 

And so we arrived at the pastor's house. The boy left. I was alone with the pastor. I spoke with him about Christ. It was an uninteresting subject for him. Then I told him what the boy had said. The pastor exclaimed: "What an idiot!" wherewith I whole-heartedly agreed. Only I considered somebody else to be the idiot. 

(Richard Wurmbrand, Sermons in Solitary Confinement, Great Britain: Hodder & Stoughton, 1969, pp. 110-111)

Galatians 4:13-14 You know it was because of a bodily ailment that I preached the gospel to you at first, and though my condition was a trial to you, you did not scorn or despise me, but received me as an angel of God, as Christ Jesus.

"You...received me as Christ Jesus"