A Christmas Special

   It was Christmas Eve.  

   People have such romantic notions about Christmas Eve.  Winter wonderlands or cozy living room pictures.  Of people singing, laughing, drinking cocoa.  Of candles and choirs and church bells.  Of snow glistening under a moonlit night.  Of peace on earth. 

   And there are other pictures, too.  Mistletoe hanging over doorways.  Flushed cheeks and snow on coats.  Of opening up the door and being surprised by the one you love most who beat all the odds to be with you for Christmas.  There are all those newer Christmas songs about what the grown-ups all wish for on Christmas Eve. 

   It had been a hard year for me, though it would take far too long to explain it all.  When the cold weather and the holiday season began, inwardly I could only groan with dread.  Maybe that was why I'd put off my shopping until the last few hours of the very last day before Christmas.  

   I hadn't noticed the days slipping by.  Then yesterday I panicked, and here I was---where no self-respecting person ever wants to be---Christmas shopping on Christmas Eve.

   The traffic was horrible.  The crowds were worse.  The swarms of people had picked over most of the store's shelves.  My half-baked gift ideas were in a crowded batch on my long shopping list, and every hour that slipped away was burning them to cinders.  

   I had slithered through the mass of humanity, dodging, wheeling, hunting.  The long lines of complaining adults, wailing children, whining teenagers, all to the beat of the relentless Christmas music---all "remixed"---had been enough to make me tear at my hair.  Literally.  Come to think of it, I hope no one noticed that.

   Each maddening wait I had used to plan my next errand, best strategy, even trying to remember where in the store each item I needed was usually located.  Which, of course, I couldn't.  

   I had a splitting headache, but didn't dare stop in a coffee shop.  "Let a man meet a she-bear robbed of her cubs rather than an American without their caffeine."  Oh, wait.  That's supposed to be "a fool in his folly."  Meh, it works both ways.  

   By my third stop I was exhausted.  I was hungry, thirsty, caffeine deprived, and had a nagging headache.  Three more stops to go.  Yup.  Three.  I was trying very hard not to think of all the wrapping I would still have to do when I got home.  If there were any boxes left for me to use...

   Yet somehow...somehow I swiped my card for the very last purchase, bid the last specimen of downtrodden humanity behind the counter to hang in there, and found myself walking to the door.  

   I dodged people left and right, my hands full of heavy shopping bags. Past the lifeless mannequins, some of them yelling and screeching to each other.  Past the ruined displays and the clothes and hangers everywhere.  I trudged up to the glass door, wishing I had strength and energy to run, but having to summon my strength to even push the door open.

   I stumbled out into a biting wind as it swept the lit street of a shopping center.  The "music" was out here, too.  So were the people.  All of them.  Everywhere.  There were lights of all colors and varieties glaring from every direction.  I'd be feeling overwhelmed if I had the energy to.  Or, wait...had I been overwhelmed so long that I no longer had any energy?  That sounded right, but I didn't have time to think it through.  Or the energy...Good heavens I couldn't even straight anymore!

   I turned the direction that would take me to my car and began to plod along at as steady pace as I could manage.  

   I glanced at the stores around me as I passed them.  They were all lit up so that they looked inviting and beautiful, but each one was dreary on the inside.  A shopping center at Christmas is supposed to be full of cheer and goodwill or whatever, but look at all these faces around me.  Provoked.  Irritated.  Exhausted, like me.  And listen to all the Noise.  People yelling, people arguing.  All of them---including me---scrambling for stuff.  For things.  As if we don't own enough things already.  

   Well, at least the lights were less here.  My headache began to ease.               
       
   How had Christmas Eve come to mean so little to me?  Never mind the crowds, they didn't know better, perhaps.  But I did.  I had purposefully let things slide.  I had avoided Christmas, avoided everything to do with Christmas this year.  Even the old Christmas albums my family listened to every year.  I couldn't say why, exactly.  It just felt empty, somehow.  

   The relentless wind seemed to tear right through my little jacket.  I shivered again and trudged on.  

   The idea of shopping had irked me especially this year.  That was why I'd put it off for so long.  The stuff.  The money.  It all seemed so pointless.  So cold.  Even now, at this moment, I couldn't even feel elated at my hard-won success.  I just wanted to take a page out of Ebenezer Scrooge's book and dismiss everything with a "Bah!  Humbug."  

   Sweet mercy was it ever cold out here!!  But as that thought crossed my mind, another followed on its heels: "My heart is cold, too."  

   I knew it was true, and it didn't even surprise me.  I felt empty on the inside.  Nothing really seemed to matter anymore, and I'd stopped caring.  

   Then at last a flicker of fear shot up inside me.  I didn't want to be like this for the rest of my life.  Is this how grown-ups feel every Christmas? 

   It was so quiet by now that I should have been able to think it through, but my mind was swimming around and around and wouldn't stop.  Then all at once I understood.  For the past few hours I had been living inside my head.  At this point I was exhausted, mentally and physically.  I'd be able to think more clearly once I got home.  

   What happened next is rather difficult to describe.  When I made that realization, I think I made an effort to pull myself together.  My mind was still hazy, so the first thought to swim its way into the mix was the idea of, "My car's not getting any nearer."  

   After which came the next thought, "Wait.  Where is my car?  Am I in the wrong parking lot?"  

   You know how in dreams you'll be doing something in a particular location, then without warning you realize that you were actually somewhere else, or that the plot of the dream has suddenly changed?  It was a little like that now, only it wasn't exactly sudden.  That is, I stopped in my tracks and looked up.  First, I remembered that I'd been walking with my head down, staring at the ground before my feet.  I then realized how dark it was around me, and that I'd been seeing my way by moonlight.  I only then noticed how quiet it was, even though when I called my memory to witness, it declared it had been quiet for a long time now.  In dreams these kind of things happen suddenly, but it didn't feel sudden to me.  The main realization to me was that all this had been going on for some time now, and I had lost all track of time.  

   Looking about in every direction, I saw trees.  I mean huge trees with massive trunks.  When I looked up, I could only see a few stars tangled in the foliage above, and the moon.  

   Of course, the idea that I was dreaming occurred to me, but it didn't seem plausible.  I was more awake at this moment than I had been five minutes ago.  I was still carrying all my shopping bags and still had my key ring looped over my finger.  I was still dressed in my sweater and jeans and my thin jacket.  My memory recalled me walking for quite some distance, but I couldn't remember seeing a single car, or parking lot.  

   At once I dug in my purse for my cell phone and pulled it out.  I used the flashlight beam to look around.  No, my eyes were not playing tricks on me.  I really was inside a wood, if not a forest, in the dead of night, with no other creature within sight.  I strained my eyes for any glimmer of light that might signal where the shopping center was, but I saw nothing.  

   I was not frightened, only bewildered.  My own senses were telling me that I'd somehow wandered into a wood, away from all civilization, without even realizing it.  I decided to find my location on Google Maps and see if I could find my way back to the shopping center.  My phone unlocked, but there was no signal, and none of my apps would open.  Not good.  My stomach sank. 

   Then I thought that perhaps I had followed a path inside, and that all I needed to do was turn around.  But I'd been looking around me for so long I wasn't sure which way was back.  I again turned on the flashlight (thank goodness that still worked) and carefully examined the ground around my feet. 

   No path.  No footprints.  Only cold, dead grass underfoot.  Only trees all around.  Oh, this was bad.  My uneasiness grew stronger than my bewilderment.  

   "Hooo.  Hooo."  A deep-throated call of an owl somewhere overhead made my heart jump in my chest.  I took a few breaths to steady myself and tried to think the situation through.  

   "Okay.  Okay, I'm in the woods.  I have to get out.  I can't find my location, I can't call for help, and I can't just stand here.  I'll just have to pick a direction and walk."  

   I didn't much like this, but I knew I had to.  I made the best guess at what direction I'd come from and began walking.  I clutched my phone in one hand, my pepper spray in the other, my shopping bags all hanging from my arms.  

   I walked for a long time, not even certain I was keeping up a straight line.  My eyes were peeled, scanning in all directions, ears alert, though all I could hear was my heart thumping away rather faster than it should. 

   Presently, I thought the trees around me were growing farther apart.  Encouraged by this, I hurried forward, catching myself wondering if I should find a little cottage where I might ask for shelter for the night, just like a traveler in a fairy tale.  But when I at last stumbled to the edge, I saw it was only a small clearing, oval in shape, with a few bushes and plants dotted about it, all lit by the cold glamour of the moon.  

   Biting my lip, I tried not to cry.  My arms were aching from all the stuff I was carrying.  My feet were burning, and I could feel some nasty blisters forming.  I put my phone back into my purse and zipped it up with an impatient tweak.  I took a few steps into the clearing and glared up at the moon.  

   "I just want to go home!"  I snapped out to no one in particular.  "How is this even happening?  What am I supposed to do?"  

   The moon held my gaze in her cool, unblinking one.  There was no answer.  Only the winter silence, and the sound of the bitter wind, (for out of the shelter of the trees, there was nothing to break it.)  

   Hearing my own voice had a strange effect on me.  Part of me felt annoyed at that snappish voice and wished the owner would go away.  But I knew that was my voice.  Part of me wished I hadn't spoken.  It made me realize how alone I was.  I could be anywhere in the world,---or heck, even out of my world!---and there was no one to hear, no one to help. 

   Finally my bewilderment and resolve gave way to my fear and loneliness.  Hot tears spilled out of my eyes. I hung my head.

   But just then, I heard something far away.  At once I raised my head, all senses on alert.  It seemed to be melodic.  Was it a voice?  And where was it coming from?  It seemed to be drawing nearer, but the wind made it tricky to tell.  Torn between the overwhelming urge to run away and the impulse to shout to hail the voice, I simply stood there, trembling with fear (and the cold).

   For a moment the wind died down, and I heard a man's voice singing out:   

   "Ding-dong merrily on high!
   In heav'n the bells are ringing!
   Ding-dong merrily the sky
   Is riv'n with angels' singing!"  

   The wind took up the "Gloria" that followed and played with it, making it it sound as if it were coming from every direction at once.

   "Gloria!  Hosanna in excelsis!" 

   Torn again between hope and fear, I simply stood and waited to see if the singer would enter the clearing.  If he seemed to be going past, I would shout. 

   All at once, the singer emerged from the trees at the far side of the clearing.  He was directly opposite me, and he strode straight toward me, singing as he came.  Did he even see me?  In this tricky light, I could not tell.  All I could see was that he was a man with silver hair, and he wore a long, full cloak of some heavy dark material.  Then I saw he had a walking stick, though he strode along as strong and as purposeful as a man in his prime.  He reminded me of a wizard, straight from the pages of a fairytale.  At once a rush of hope rose up in me.  He could not be evil if he was singing a hymn with such joy.  Yet I felt afraid, too.   

   The singer strode toward me, and when were close enough to see each other's faces, I saw he was an old man with a wrinkled face, a rather large nose, and a pair of dancing blue eyes.  If he had looked like how I'd imagined Gandalf or Dumbledore to have looked, I would have taken it as proof that I was dreaming, but he did not.  He was smiling at me, just as if we had arranged to meet on this very spot. 

   How to describe his eyes?  Looking back on it now, words come reluctantly.  There was so much joy in them, and laughter.  But after one glance into them, I could see that he knew me.  I could see that he knew who I was and the predicament I was in.  Those eyes were full of secrets, and their keenness cut me like a knife.  This was no one to trifle with.  His very goodness felt frightening.  And me...my heart was cold and resentful.  And he knew it.  

   He strode on until he stood a few feet in front of me.  Then he stopped and leaned on his staff, looking whimsically down at me.  I didn't know what to say.  But then he spoke, "What are you doing out in the forest at so late an hour?"  

   "Well, I've---lost my way, Sir."  

   "Indeed you have.  In more ways than one.  Do you know how it happened?"  

   "No, I don't.  I just sort of found myself here."  I paused, and then asked, "Do you know how I got here, Sir?"  

   His eyes were grave now, but not severe.  "I think," he replied, "that you lost your way by trying to find your way back.  Everyone who tries to find their way back into the past eventually ends up lost in this forest."  

   Startled, I blinked once or twice and said nothing.  I had an idea to ask him if he meant getting turned in the wrong direction by forgetting which way I'd come from, but I knew he wouldn't be fooled by playing dumb.  

   So I just repeated, " 'Finding my way into the past?' "  

   "Isn't that what you were doing?"

   I thought for a moment.  I was on the edge of comprehension, but I still didn't quite see.  "Please, I don't understand."  

   "When you were out shopping tonight, why were you angry?"  

   My cheeks burned, and I ducked my head.  "Well," I spoke slowly, "I guess it was because things weren't going the way I wanted them to.  Is that...?  Oh..." 

   "Well?"  

   I was beginning to understand, but I was ashamed to say it out loud.  "Is that what's been wrong with me all year?  Is that why Christmas has lost the magic it once had?"  (It would have sounded silly to speak like this to most people, but darkness in a forest standing before a cloaked Stranger holding a staff will do a number on your inhibitions.)  

   "Is that why nothing has the magic it once had?"  I asked in a rush.  My throat tightened, and I found myself looking up into the Stranger's face to hear his answer.  

   The Stranger's eyes held my gaze.  "Child, when we live each day angry that our story isn't being written the way we want, we are angry at the Author.  When we are angry at Him, there can be no joy.  There can be no love, or meaning, or purpose in anything.  We shut our eyes to the beauty of the world around us and muddy the streams of blessings He sends us each day. When we do not trust Him, we cannot love Him.  When we do not love Him, we certainly will not obey Him."  

   He paused.  I tried to look away, then found I didn't want to.  

   "You have been trying to live inside the past.  Trying to have the happiness you once had by constantly recalling those memories.  But memories cannot be lived in, nor can you change your circumstances.  That time has passed." 

   At last the emotions that I had kept dammed up inside me grew too strong to hold back.  The barrier burst, and all at once I was weeping helplessly.  Right there in front of the cloaked Stranger.  Right there in the moonlit glade, in the howling wind, still clutching my absurd shopping bags.  

   I cried for my friends who had gone out of my life.

   I cried for the golden dreams and silvery hopes I'd cherished that would never be mine.

   I cried because I was always catching glimpses of Beauty that set my heart sick with desire; yet the whispers always passed me by.  They never brought what they promised.  

   I cried because I was always feeling alone.  No matter how many people cared about me, or how much fun I managed to distract myself with, I always felt left behind and forgotten when the noise around me died away.  It was weariness to live with that starving sensation on the inside; worse than hunger or thirst but which nothing could ever slake.  

   I cried because all that the Stranger had said was true, and I was seeing myself for a moment as I actually was.  

   How long I stood there weeping, I never knew.  Presently my sobs spent themselves into a sigh or two.  When my eyesight cleared, I saw the Stranger's boots had come just opposite my own feet.  A faint flicker of hope ran through my heart at the sight of them.  I had begun to wonder if he had gone away.  But he was there.  

   I waited a few moments for him to speak, but he said not a word.  He seemed to be waiting for me to say something first, but what was there to say?  We both knew what he said was true.  I could still cry over it all.  As a matter of fact, I could keep on weeping for the rest of my life.  Giving in to the tears had merely given expression to the endless pain within me.  I had concealed it hoping I could control it or numb it.  But this pain wasn't going away.  

   My common sense finally awoke within all the muddle of emotions.  It suddenly flashed across my mind that I didn't want to go on standing here crying for ever.  That was absolutely absurd.  

   My senses caught hold of the practical thought like a lifeline.  It was like treading on solid ground after slipping over a sheet of ice.  I still had to get out of the forest.  The Stranger had said that those who kept going backward always found themselves lost here.  That implied that if I changed my mindset, there would be a way out.  Back to home and life.  

   So I wiped my eyes (and nose) on the sleeve of my jacket and looked up at the Stranger's face.  

   "Where do I go from here, Sir?"  

   It would be impossible to describe the way the Stranger smiled at me.  Something of it can be found when you yank dark curtains away from a tall window on a summer afternoon.  Something of it can be found in memories of deep childhood when your mother used to tuck you in bed.  The wind around us suddenly died down, and all at once a shiver seemed to pass through the tangled forest.  

   "I was sent to show you the way," he told me, still smiling.  "Will you come?"  

   "Yes." 

   The Stranger walked past me, toward the forest's edge that I had come from.  I waited for him to pass, then followed him.  

   At the first step I noticed that somehow the light had changed.  The cold moonshine was completely gone.  Instead everything was glowing in the silver sheen of a trillion stars.  I was wondering where the moon had gone when I saw the Stranger had stopped and had turned to face me.  

   "Walk up here beside me," he invited, stretching out his arm to me.  "You are cold."  

   Gratefully I obeyed, for I was almost numb by now.  "Thank you, Sir."  

   When I reached him, he threw his cloak around my shoulders.  It whooshed around me and all my packages and tucked itself in around my other shoulder.  It must have been of a magic material, for it was delightfully snug and did not hamper my feet in the least.  I shivered in relief, and we walked into the forest side by side.  

   The starlight penetrated the treetops, and I saw that there was indeed a path below our feet that certainly hadn't been there before.  

   "Does the path only show if you're walking this direction?" I asked.  

   "You can only see the Path if you're walking on it," he explained.  "It is the Narrow way, and you cannot perceive or follow it unless you are in obedience to our Lord.  Few there are that find it, but it is found by all who seek for it."  

   I smiled.  Then a thought struck me.  "What if someday I get lost in this forest again and I can't see the path?  What if I don't know why I ended up in it again?"  

   "Then I suppose you must ask Him to show you the Way."  

   "And what if He---doesn't answer?"  I offered tentatively. 

   Under the cloak he turned my shoulder so that he could see my face. He read my eyes in a swift, keen glance.

   “You think He might not answer?”

   “He doesn't always answer,” I offered timidly. “Sometimes He is silent.”

   I stopped talking. There was so much more I could say, but I couldn't bring myself to say it. I would have liked to explain to him that most of the time God seemed very far away, even when I tried to seek Him out.

   For a long time, longer than I cared to calculate, prayers to the Lord seemed to me like...like letters to a King from a citizen.  They came from my heart, worded as respectfully and as hopefully as I dared.  Praying them was like dropping them into a mailbox, never to be seen again.  I never expected to hear from Him; anything He would say to me was already written in the Bible.  Heartfelt prayers and tears in the dark I can pour forth, but He always seems so far away.  I know the Bible says to request things with all supplication and praise and gratitude...but how exactly does someone ask for the kinds of things my heart longs for?  Things like how I want to be married, and to have children.  And what about things that are abstract?  I long for adventure, beauty, and fulfillment.  How do you ask God for something like that?  If He is sovereign---which He is---than why ask Him for anything?  If He wanted me to have it, He would have already given it to me---right?  We're to pray for things “according to His will,” but what exactly does that mean?  I can read my Bible and guess at the sort of things that might be according to His will, but I could never know in advance what He really wants for my life.  I mean, come on...look at this year.  Such a twist in the plot.  I've no earthly idea where I am headed.  Where I am doesn't even make sense.  And I'm not just talking about the forest.

   I can't just say things like that.  I know it isn't right, somehow.  I should find my answers in the Bible.  But how---how do you pray in hope---or ask for things---when you don't think He really cares?

   There, I said it.  In my head anyway.  There it is.  Fulfillment and beauty and adventure may be promised me in the next life, but nothing is promised to me now.  Why ask for it?  Why bother Him with it?  Aren't we supposed to obey?  Do the right thing.  Then do the next thing.  And the next.  And the next.  Keep going.  We're supposed to be doing things for Him, obeying Him.  Those other desires only seem to get me in trouble when I humor them.

   ...Or...perhaps the reason I try to lose myself in serving is so that it might numb the pain of perpetual disappointment.  Life is hard.  I shouldn't expect it to be beautiful and exciting.  I know that, and yet somehow I can never get over the disappointment of how things always are.  Life wasn't meant to be this way, but it always is.  Oh, I know that's not a feeling unique to me.  Every other person on this planet knows that they and the world around them is not what it should have been.  I know that everyone feels as empty on the inside as I do.  I know everyone is as lonely on the inside as I am.  I just try to ignore the pain by focusing on other things.  That's the difference.  Some people strive to fill the void.  I've given up, and I just want to try to numb the pain.  Just hoping against hope that someday Christ may call me home or come back for us and stop the pain.  But He doesn't come. Life is a living death that never quite ends.  The discontent in me will not be quiet, will not be subdued.

   So it seems...even as I serve...even as I try to obey...that God has forgotten me.  Or doesn't care about my present state, since He'll fix it all later.

   And really, why argue with Him?

   Like I said, I can't articulate these thoughts aloud.  They're wrong, I guess, though I don't really know how.  When He's silent, you can only wait for Him to speak or intervene, and just do your best in the meantime.

   My eyes had glazed over as I collected these thoughts.  The Stranger still stood facing me, as if waiting for me to explain.  I couldn't.  Not out loud.  I looked up at him to see what he would say.

   His expression made me flush with shame.  It wasn't as if he was reading my eyes this time.  It was plain he already knew my whole thought process better than I knew it myself.  His eyes were piercing, reproachful, and yet they held a strange pity.

   He said nothing.  He only turned and began walking with me again, his arm still across my shoulders.

   “My dear,” he spoke after a painful (at least for me) few minutes' silence.  “I believe you have forgotten how the Story actually goes.”

   “Which story, Sir? Mine?”

   “No, no. I cannot read your story. I mean the Story of Christ and His incarnation.  You seem to have forgotten several crucial points, and now you're reading your own story wrong because of it.”

   I could sense that he was right.  I had no desire to argue or explain myself.  Perhaps he would set me straight if I asked him.  Anyway, I can never resist a good story, even if it's one I've heard before.

   “Will you tell me, Sir?  Please.”

   “Well, to start with, you and I are rebels, my dear.  We were born from Adam's doomed line; under God's fury by birth and by choice.  Now, if God's will was to withdraw His love from us, He would have done so.  It would have pleased His just wrath at our disobedience to cast us into eternal punishment at any given moment.  We would be found guilty.”

   “But,” the Stranger continued, “such was not God's will.”

   A sudden, sweeping wind rose up, causing the trees about us to nod their boughs and whisper to each other.

   “God is just.  But He was unwilling to leave us in our damned state.  When the angels fell into sin, they were banished from His presence with no hope of deliverance.  But God in His mercy, chose to set His favor upon wretched Man.  It was His divine genius that formed a plan for how to both pay for the wrongs committed, and yet to reconcile His creatures to Himself.  To pay their ransom, and make them His sons and daughters.”  He paused a moment, then asked me, “Do you think that God cares nothing for you?”

   I shook my head mutely.

   “It was Christ,” the Stranger went on, “Christ the second Person of the Trinity who volunteered to lay down His life to pay the penalty.  The Law that we have broken demanded blood.  And Christ was eager to take our punishment upon Himself.”

   “So the Father sent forth His Son on a mission. Christ would take on humanity; become a Man himself.  The fullness of God's nature, and also the full extent of Man's nature.  His frailty, his weakness, his helplessness.  Even under the Law that He had written.  He would enter our world as a wailing, helpless infant.  He would be born into poverty, knowing hunger and thirst and want. Knowing grief and sorrow.   He would be misunderstood, hated, and separated from the intimacy and glory of His Father.  He would be abandoned, betrayed, and falsely accused.  He would be stretched out on the cruelest instrument of torture man can think of, and be mocked and abused by the ones He loved and came to save.”

   I shuddered. Suffocation. Splinters. Whips. Nails. Spit. Nakedness. Agonizing thirst. Thorns. Sweat. And blood. To see His own blood pouring down.

   “But what did He tell us, during His ministry, about His character?”   The Stranger's voice interrupted my reverie.  “He told us that God's character was like a shepherd who, counting all of his sheep realized one had wandered away.  Now what would man do in that situation?  Stay with the others so that no more would wander away, perhaps.  But God would rather seek out the lost one and give Himself no rest until He could find it and bring it home, no matter how far away it had run or how much trouble it had gotten itself into.  He came to seek and save the lost.”

   “He went about healing those who cried out to Him.  Blind from birth, physical deformities, wasting diseases, it made no difference.  He brought back those who had already died!  Reversing the curse, undoing the hurt in the world.  But more than that, He gave us His truth.  He addressed the issues at the root, where all sin and sorrow reside: the heart.  He was sharp to the self-righteous, and He was gracious to the ones who knew they needed help.”

   “He told us that God watches out for the birds, providing them with food, and knowing when each one's life was ended.  Christ told us that we were worth far more to Him than the birds.  He said that He knew the number of hairs on each of our heads.”

   Here he stopped, turned, and looked down at me.  In the dark the starlight was mirrored in his eyes. His gaze penetrated me; it felt as though he was looking right into my soul.

   “Do you think then, that He has forgotten you?” he inquired softly.  “Do you suppose the One who counts each star in its galaxy and every hair on your head was not concerned when your heart was broken?”

   Tears blinded my sight.

   “Do you think that the One who was acquainted with grief cares nothing for your sorrow?  Or that the One who hears the cries of the ravens paid no heed to your anguished prayers?  Was it not He in the garden who entreated His Father for any other way than the road of suffering before Him?  Did He not learn obedience Himself when, in the face of terror and anguish and death itself, He prayed, 'Yet not my will, but Yours be done' ?”

   “Or do you suppose that He knows nothing of loneliness or emptiness?  Separated from His Father, abandoned by His friends, enduring His Father's wrath and anger?  What was it, then, that made Him cry out---”

   Here the Stranger threw back his head, and in a mighty voice that made the whole forest ring, he sounded the old, old cry---

   “My God, my God---why have you forsaken me?”

   I had my eyes shut tight, shivering at the thought.

   “Child,” the Stranger spoke to me again in his gentle, level voice.  “He endured all that to bring you near.  When He emerged triumphant from the grave, the Master of Death, the Lord of Life...it was to save you.  He is now still Man, at the right hand of His Father, the sympathetic High Priest.  He pleads for you before the God who sent Him at the first to ransom you.  The Holy Spirit lives within you, guiding you, assuring you that you are His forever.  Do you imagine that you can be lost from Him?”

   I opened my eyes and blinked away my tears.  Once again, he lead me forward.

   In a few minutes we had come to the edge of a great open field, still fringed all about with trees.

   “Now,” he spoke in a merrier tone.  “Your home is on the other side of this field.  And it is here we must part company.”  He drew away his cloak from my shoulders.

   “Oh,” I spoke dazedly, as if coming out of a dream.  I stared very hard across the field, but saw nothing that would indicate the electric lights of the world I must return to.  But then, I knew better than to trust my eyes alone.  I turned to the Stranger, and as his marvelous smile beamed at me, a surge of emotion welled up inside me.  I shifted all the shopping bags into my left hand and offered him my right.

   “Thank you for setting me right, Sir.  Thank you for everything.”

   He stepped forward and took my hand.  “You should thank the One who sent me,” he smiled.  “But you are most welcome, and it was my pleasure.”

   He bowed over my hand, and he kissed it. I couldn't help laughing a bit in surprise. And rather against my better judgment, I tightened my fingers and stammered out, “Will I ever see you again?”

   I know, I know, it's a cliché thing to ask, but seriously, wouldn't you have done the same?

   “Of course you will,” he answered readily.  “If not in this life, then in the life to follow.  But we will certainly meet again.”

   I smiled and withdrew my hand.

   “Our Lord would not have told us to draw near if He wanted us to stay at a distance." He reminded me gently.  " 'He who did not spare His own Son, but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also in Him graciously give us all things?'  'Ask, and you shall receive.  Seek and you shall find.  Knock and it shall be opened unto you.'  It may not look like how you expect, but no more of this nonsense that He has forgotten you.”

   I nodded. 

   The Stranger stepped forward and raised my chin with his fingers. “Go in obedience and faith, and joy will find you.”  Then he kissed my forehead almost like a blessing or a benediction.

   “I will,” I promised.  We each gave a little wave, and I set out across the field.

   It was certainly a huge field.  There was a layer of frost over the grass that sparkled in the faint starshine.  I stopped, as is my habit when alone at night, to gaze up at the sky.

   It was such a clear night that you could see the haze of light from the galaxies.  My city-bred eyes do not often get to see just how crowded the night sky is with stars.  There were trillions of them in every direction.

   All at once I laid down my shopping bags and stood up straight, drinking in the sight.  How near the stars seemed to be!  They looked as if they were just inches above the trees.  The more I turned about to look at them, the more I could see.

   Slowly, rather like a volume knob being turned up, Music seemed to be coming through to me. Cold and strange with a whole complexity of harmonies.  Well, I say Music, but I don't think I was hearing it at all.  Not through my ears.  It's difficult to explain.  I wasn't hearing sounds, the way we think of when we think of music.  It was something I was sensing tangibly through every nerve in my body, and it registered in my mind rather like music.

   Then, with growing wonder, the idea crossed my mind that I was hearing the Music of the Spheres. The song that the heavens declare, the harmonies, the vibrations, the throb of emotion, the joy of unfallen creation that it had been singing since the day it was called into being.  The stars and planets were around me in every direction I could look, and I supposed my feet must have left the ground.  I seemed to be in the sky, though each orb was infinitely far from me.  I don't know how I felt no fear. There was overpowering wonder, but not a trace of fear.  Fear was not in me, somehow. 

   The starry heavens rippled and tossed.  Wait...was I in the sky or under water?  The dark changed to the clearest, most dazzling aquamarine.  I seemed to be rocked and borne within the lilting rhythm of the Tides.  I seemed to see glimpses of the swarms of living creatures that live in the seas. Coral, fishes, great creatures, tiny shellfish, starfish, and all the plants, each of them swaying or dancing in time to the hidden music. The colors, the shapes, the textures, the dancing lights, all of it was pulsing with joy and harmony.  It was so glorious I could have wept with joy, adding my tears to the salty waters.

   Then I seemed to see the great waves on the surface, rising, rising, then curling at the tips...to curve forward into a living liquid glass arc of motion. Then the crash as it folded in upon itself, only to rise and fall again.

   Then I seemed to remember the cool, dewy Spring.  (Though whether I was indeed seeing it or if the Music was translating itself into pictures in my mind I was never quite sure.)  But I remembered the breeze through open windows in March when the cold finally spent itself, leaving a young, hopeful sweetness in its place.  The dainty, dewy flowers and the new growth pushing out of the soft, wet ground.  It made me think of Easter, and of the glorious promise of Resurrection, when all things would be made new.  For the Spring always came, no matter how bitter the frosts had been, nor how long it had lingered into the year.

   And then somehow I saw the night again among the trees of some well-manicured grounds, with fireflies flitting all about, like fairies.  I knew at once it was summer by the warm, humid air laden with the immortal scent of growing things.  I heard crickets and cicadas in their evensong, and the twittering of sleepy birds just after sunset.

    Ah...then the crisp whiff in a cool breeze...the ebullient harpsichord rumor of Change coming.  I was plunged into the fragrant shower of falling golds, reds, fiery oranges, mellowed greens and rich plums as they twirled through the air.  I smelled the ripened fields, the sweet odors of the dying leaves.  I could hear the scrunching and skittering of leaves under foot...I could smell the scent of pumpkin, and a fragrant feast cooking in a warm kitchen...feel the comfort of enveloping sweaters, softened with age.  I felt the promise of Adventure, and the restless desire to wander.  And the singing...the hope of Christmas...the plucking of strings and the blast of herald trumpets...

   A new picture sharpened upon my eyes.  An enormous chain of mountains stretching as far as the eye could see in both directions.  They were all unscalable peaks, glimmering sapphire and pearly white under a Northern sky.  Was that...a wall...running along the very top?  A wall indeed, with towers at regular intervals along it.

   I gazed at it and thought I could make out an enormous gate in its center. And behind it...was that...?

   It was.  It was a castle...or a palace...or a stronghold, it was impossible to tell which...or was it all of them?

   As I watched, the shining trails of the Aurora Borealis awoke and shimmered throughout the starry sky.  At the same moment, a Music came to me from within the castle walls...and no---alas, alas!---I could not make out a melody, or a single phrase, nor any chord to remember.  But whatever it was, it rushed over me, overpowering my senses, my mind, my will, my soul, my emotions.  It awoke my desires, my affections, and every longing that is possible to feel.  How to describe it?  It was as elfin and ethereal as the piping of the daintiest pennywhistle, yet it held all the authority and masculinity of the noble French horn.  It was as sweet as the violin, as piercing as the oboe, and yet inside it were thousands of choirs of voices giving unceasing glory and worship.  Tears streamed down my face and were frozen into snowflakes that were swept away in the mighty North Wind that lifted my hair and whirled it about.

   Everything within me wanted to go there. I knew that everything my heart desired must be there...for He must be there.  The One who had given His blood to ransom me.  Was the music calling for me?  Could it be?  No...no, not yet.  The Call was there, but not the final summons.  Oh...how to live?  How to go on living?  It was almost worse than never hearing it at all...for I felt the Music fading into the distance.  I could feel the world I lived in coming closer, the Pictures slipping away.

   The last thing I remember was...well, I didn't exactly hear a Voice.  Not with my ears, anyway.  With my mind.  Into my mind.  It translated into my mind the idea of a Voice in a few specific words, as if it was using a memory of mine to speak anew to me.

   Infinitely powerful, and infinitely tender, the words:

   “No more despair.”

   My feet touched the ground.  I was staring upwards, and it seemed as though the night sky closed overhead.  I was back in the starlit field, my bags sitting beside me.

   In the stillness that followed I tried to grasp all I had seen, but the harder my memory worked, the more it slipped from me.  With an effort that wrung my heart, I let the memories go, and only held to the words still ringing in my mind.

   I was afraid the loss of such priceless treasure trove would make my heart ache for the rest of my life...but no.  Like a falling star, the memories of the images softly faded back into my mind.  Like a glowing, pulsing ember, they nestled themselves into some deep cavern in my heart.  And there they shall stay, till the end of my days.

   I knew what I had to do.  With a deep breath, I gathered up my bags and followed my feet to the further edge of the field.  I had to go on.  I had to follow the path.  That was what mattered now.

   As I reached the edge of the field, I saw my house through the trees, all lit up as though expecting me.  Astonished, I broke into a run.  The trees ended at the edge of my driveway, where my car was parked.  I walked up to my front porch and looked back.  The forest was receding, melting away.  I noticed a bright light shone from within it not too far away.  I felt sure it was light from the Stranger's staff.  I smiled, lifting my hand and waving to it.  The forest and the light faded into my own street, under the night sky.

   So I unlocked my door, and went in.

   Merry Christmas to you all.

Love,

~Cadenza