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On the Eve of Christmas Eve

12/21/2017

14 Comments

 
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Dikkon Eberhart



Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah


Don’t skim your eye down the words.  Go back and say the words.  Say them to yourself with measured solemnity, four syllables to each word.  Sixteen syllables all together. 

You are praising the Lord.  This is the Gloria in excelsis Deo that you are pronouncing. 
 



It was late morning on the eve of Christmas Eve. 

I called my wife at the church.  Since she and I came to Christ six years before, she had been our pastor’s secretary.  I was checking in, concerned about errands I needed to finish while I was out on the road.  We spoke briefly about the errands. 

Then I asked her when she planned to come home from the church. 

Uncharacteristically, she did not know.  Usually, she knows.  Usually, she knows because she knows what tasks she must finish.  Usually, she responds with a time—an hour, two hours. 

But this time, she was vague.  It was odd of her—my wife is not a vague person, about time or about anything else. 

“I don’t know,” is what she said, and she said it with a puzzled intonation, as though she wondered why she did not know and yet she said it anyway.  I was puzzled, too, when I hung up. 

I thought perhaps I should call her back, to ask if she were all right.  I thought perhaps I should question her tone of puzzlement, which suggested she did not feel in charge of her time that afternoon.  But I did not call her back.  I had errands to do. 




Here’s what I learned later. 

After I hung up, an hour or two passed at the church.  My wife was alone.  She finished tasks.  There is always a task to finish on a secretary’s desk.  But, puzzlingly, she did not formulate a plan for the finishing of her tasks and for her getting home. 

Then the church’s door opened and a man entered whom my wife had never seen.  The man introduced himself and asked if the pastor were in.  The pastor was not in.  

The man seemed puzzled by the circumstance that the pastor was not in at the church.  “But God told me I must come to see him now.”  

“Well, would you like me to make an appointment for you, for later?”

“But God told me I must come to see him now.” 

After all—this is how my wife reported the conversation to me later—after all, the man was puzzled himself.  He had done what God had told him to do.  Now, it was the pastor’s turn. 

The pastor had left the church not long before, with several plans in his mind.  He had not been certain about  which of the plans he would undertake. 

He would let my wife know which plan he would undertake, he said, when he knew himself. 




My wife dialed the phone.  The pastor answered.   

“There’s a man here,” she said, and she gave his name.  “He says he needs to see you.”

“Oh.” 

“I wasn’t certain about your plan.” 

“Well, I haven’t selected my plan yet.  I don’t know why.  Right now, I’m eating lunch.”  The pastor thought for a moment.  “Can he wait ten minutes?”

My wife looked at the man.  “Can you wait ten minutes?”

“Yes.”

She turned back to the phone.  “He can wait.”

“See you in ten.”

In ten minutes, the pastor arrived at the church.  He and the man went into the pastor’s office.  Two hours later, the man accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord, and his name was written in Glory. 

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah
 



Late that same night, on the eve of Christmas Eve, my wife and I relaxed on our couch. 

Our house was aromatic with baking gift breads.  Our Christmas tree was lit with white bulbs, wax candles burned among our mantel display of spruce boughs and red balls, and twinkling candles were alight in our windows so that, as my mother told me when I was a child, if the Christ Child should need a place to lie down, He would know by our candles that He would be welcome here. 

My wife had explained to me the odd events of that afternoon—the man puzzled why the pastor should not be at his office when God had indicated that he would be, my wife puzzled about her inability to manage a time to return to our house so that she was available just at the right moment to make that telephone call to our pastor, our pastor puzzled that he had not selected among his plans for the afternoon so that he was, at the necessary time for the man, just eating lunch. 

My wife lay back on the couch and put her feet in my lap.  In silence, I stroked her feet.  The wine was red in my glass, and white in my wife’s.  We listened to Susan Boyle sing Hallelujah. The words of poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen filled the room.   

We are busy people, she and I, with several jobs between us—retirees who still work hard, and I had a new book coming out, a memoir recounting my life as the son of a poet father—a father whose poetry molded my relationship with our Father. 

Relaxing on our couch, weary after days and days of heavy work for both of us, nearing the completion of our Advent anticipation of a miracle—humbly trying to experience our anticipation with patience—the beauty of the season and of the Christ lights overthrew me.  I wept. 

My wife looked her question, but gently: this was her emotional husband. 

“It’s beautiful,” I said.

I wept for Cohen’s spare, elegiac poetry.  I wept for Boyle’s easy voice.  I wept for the still, calm beauty of our decorated home.  I wept for giving gift bread to our friends, bread which my wife had created. 

But mostly I wept that, on the eve of Christmas Eve, the Lord Himself had used my wife and our pastor for His own purpose, which was to bring another soul to salvation—that godly using, which had puzzled each of them, as their planning of their day was set aside.     


Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Hallelujah.
 
 
 
[This piece was written and originally published in The Longer View in December 2014, which is the year its event occurred.  I've re-posted it as closely as possible to the eve of Christmas Eve each year since. 

May you as its reader enjoy a merry Christmas!]  
​
 


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14 Comments
David C. Wilson
12/22/2017 12:01:43 pm

What a gift Dikkon-- The gift of the virgin birth, the gift of a Savior, the gift of work, the gift of ministry, and the gift of salvation!

Reply
Dikkon
12/22/2017 12:45:37 pm

Yes indeed, friend David -- yes, all these gifts are fine indeed. I'm glad you enjoyed the piece.

I know you to be a great man of the spirit who understands the gifts of the Lord. May you and your whole family enjoy a glorious Christmas!

The birth of the Savior, hurrah!

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Betsy
12/22/2017 01:01:19 pm

Hallelujah

Reply
Dikkon
12/22/2017 02:15:59 pm

Bless you!

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Ruth Moore
12/22/2017 02:48:34 pm

Thank you, Dikkon, for posting this piece. It gives me renewed hope for those loved ones who have yet to come to Christ. It could happen anytime and anywhere, in the simplest of situations. Merry Christmas to you and all your family. Sending my love.

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Dikkon
12/22/2017 03:32:26 pm

Dear Ruth, thank you for this response! As I read it over before posting it, I had such a strong sense of the spot where Channa was sitting when all this transpired -- in a spot you know well -- that it was almost as though I were transported back from Virginia to Maine. The experience I recorded here gives me that same hope you feel -- and, YES, it can AND IT DOES happen, even in the simplest of situations.

I am passing our own Merry Christmas back to you and to all your family. Along with our love.

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Robert Bidwell
12/22/2017 05:33:34 pm

Hallelujah!

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Dikkon
12/22/2017 09:51:49 pm

Ha ha! You and Betsy. Each of you gave me a chuckle.

Bob, may you and all your family have a very merry Christmas, and I hope the best for you in 2018. When you have a chance, please give my warm greetings to Laura that she may have a fulfilling year in 2018 as well.

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Stu Taylor
12/22/2017 09:56:16 pm

What a wonderful "proof" of God's personal power that cannot be thwarted even when we try. That was like the beginning of my conversion back in 1957 in January when I took a different bus than usual to get to the subway into Boston to Univ. On that bus a man witnessed of Christ to me (first time ever). I scoffed at him saying that no one really knows. He quoted several scripture verses and I objected. Then, he kindly said that it didn't sound like I had ever read the Bible message of Christ. And then he clinched it over my objections by simply saying "Son, if I were you I wouldn't give book reviews on books I've never read." Later that night I asked my Mom if we had a Bible and she pointed me to the bottom drawer of her dresser. I pulled it out and removed the birth certificates and flowers being dried in its pages. I began to read it in January of 1957 and read it until June as opportunity presented itself. One night in June I knelt by my bed (somewhere in the gospel of John) and was truly converted and began a journey with the Saviour that has now lasted 60 and 1/2 years. And it all began with a 5 minute conversation on a bus I normally did not take with a man that I never met before and have never met since. It is true that God's grace and reach are not bound. A Blessed Christmas to you and Channa down in Virginia from up here in very snowy Maine. Stu T.

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Dikkon
12/23/2017 01:20:11 pm

Dear Stu, thank you for your witness as retold here - 5 minutes leading to 60.5 years of pastoral grace and truth-telling! I remember your story and am glad that other readers have encountered it now, too.

Enjoy the snow!

Often Virginians respond incorrectly to learning that we are here, having moved after 30 years in Maine. "Had enough of the snow, is that it?" Well, no. I love the snow and deeply miss both working with it and its beauty. But being so close with our grandchildren beats even the snow!

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Peter Cutler link
12/23/2017 10:48:10 am

Good Day, my friend. I hope that this Christmas season continues to provide joy and revelation for you and yours and that the upcoming New Year will be positive in the ways that count. Continue to share your writing talent and insights, truly a gift that keeps on giving.

Reply
Dikkon
12/23/2017 01:26:08 pm

Dear friend Peter. I like your phrase "in ways that count." Neatly put.

I intend to continue the blog posts, if I remain able. Doing so brings such a blessing of shared reflections by men such as yourself, and by women readers as well.

I am honored by your final sentence; you are generous. Thank you!

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floyd samons link
12/23/2017 11:40:15 am

Yes. I immediately remembered reading this. I enjoyed it yet again. What a gift to be part of our Father's grand plan to draw a soul He made back to Himself.

Merry Christmas, friend. Blessings to you and all of your family.

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Dikkon
12/23/2017 01:32:17 pm

You are one person among several others who I was pretty certain would have read this piece already. Thanks for being willing to read it again. Get ready for a year from now--I expect you'll see it yet again!

Merry Christmas to you also, Floyd, and to your family.

Reply



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