On A Starry Night.

It was the time of the year when Christmas decorations could be seen along the street. Some people were again wearing silly jumpers or Father Christmas hats. At school the choir practice had intensified and teachers were recruiting people to include in the school talent show or the Christmas nativity play. Cassie wanted to stay home under her duvet and wake up when the madness was over.

Couldn’t people see that it was all just a commercial thing? Didn’t they know that wrappings only camouflage the reality of their lives? Secret Santa and opulent dinners were not going to change anything. If their lives were just like hers -and she really thought they were- everything was going to continue as it was. The glitter of the season just made everything worse. Because when everything was done and all the wrappings binned they would be able to see the futility of life again in a more tangible way. For Cassie, her mum was never gonna come back and her gran was not there anymore to cheer her up with her stories.

‘You sound so salty!’ Her friend Marion had said when she declined her invitation to see the new lights in town. ‘Easy for you’ she thought, as she saw her friend disappearing into the night. ‘I have to spend my days alone. You have a family who seem to care. I have to come to an empty house until dad is back from work and even then he is so immersed in his work that he doesn’t even notice I am there. I am lonely, plodding along, senseless, and no one cares. If only gran was alive.’

Cassie remembered the days when this was so and she would run as fast as she could from school to sit at her feet and listen to her stories. She had this spring in her voice that could bring all the characters she talked about to life. They somehow seemed real. Darkness was bearable then, as though through her words, everything came alight. But now, darkness was all around her, never dissipating, never lifting.

Sometimes she thought it would have been better not to hear the stories at all, especially the one about the Word. It had made her dream about a different life, a different world which she now saw as non-existent. Yet, she hung on to the words she had almost learned verbatim:

‘‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was

with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in

the beginning. Through him all things were made;

without him nothing was made that has been made. In

him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind.

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has

not overcome it.’ John1:1-5

‘Repeating the words gave her certain comfort but still did not make sense to her at all. A word that was with God? A word that was God? Gran had said that these story alongside the others will make her understand there was something else to live for. A true purpose. The real purpose. One that started with the creation of everything and that came to fruition on a starry night. Well, she thought, there is no light in my darkness, no star guiding me and the only one that could have led me there has gone.

As she sat down in the darkness of her room, the stillness of the evening bear down upon her. Sipping tea she went over again those verses of ‘the Word’ and smiled.

‘Gran, I miss you.’

Almost in cue, she heard the lock of the door. Her dad had come in. ‘Cassie, I’m home. Hey kiddo, why don’t we go out and get a curry or something. They are having some carols down the road, perhaps, we could listen to them whilst we wait.’ She was in no mood to go out, let alone listen again to some fables about a king Wenceslas which she was sure was just as other carols totally fantasy narratives. Besides, her dad had never been interested in spending time with her, and even less keen to listen to carols.

Yet, her gran’s face and her words echoed in her mind, and without thinking she heard herself saying ‘yeah, ok, let’s go.’ They grab their coats and walked pass the shops onto a little green patch outside the church. The lights were on, an a bunch of people were singing with gusto. Some offer them mulled wine, minced pies. It was odd. She and her dad didn’t say a thing, they just stood there, looking at the sheets they were given trying to follow.

‘Gran would have been in her element’ Dad said. And she nodded.

The song was Silent Night. Cassie had heard it several times. But something tonight just clicked. ‘Christ the Saviour is born’

She looked at her dad and said: ’Dad, is that the Word?!’ Cassie’s father didn’t understand what she was talking about. But suddenly it all began to make sense to her. The song said the baby was born from a virgin. Her gran’s words again ‘Unto us a child is born.’ Something about a counsellor a prince an everlasting father. This baby born in the manger was surely the one her gran had talked about and that he was to be called counsellor, the mighty God the everlasting father. The prince of peace.’

Somehow the puzzle in her head was coming together. ‘The word was there at the beginning. The word was God and if the word was God and this child was called God, he was the Word! He came into the world, the world he had created!

As a writer in a story, the word had made the world and in an unexpected twist became part of that story. This baby in a manger was the key into God’s kingdom. He was the light that no darkness was to overcome. Her body shake and the darkness that was surrounding her lifted as she thought of this baby in a manger. Soft and tender, yet a powerful saviour?

As the song finished, a myriad of thoughts came racing by. Her gran had said, ‘The bible is not only a bunch of different stories Cassie. It is the story of a real King who decided to come to this world to rescue his people.’ She wanted to believe. She wanted so desperately to know that she had a purpose. That things were truly going to be ok. That the darkness was to clear at last. Tonight, for the first time, she thought, if this is real. If you are real. If you are the truth, help me step out and I will follow.

On a Starry night, ‘the Word’ came to the world as a babe in a manger and his coming pierce the hearts of humble men. On a green patch in East London a teenager heard the message of ‘the Word’ again and responded to His call and her life was changed.

Have you heard Him?

By Ellelein Kirk.