Mad Rush

For Mona the mad rush up to Christmas had been a living hell.  Nothing she had planned had come out right.  Not the trip back home for Thanksgiving, nor the early shopping for gifts for her sister’s twins. The water heater had to be replaced, and that took the whole Christmas Club savings account, as well as a big chunk of her bonus pay check. Plus, the economy had kept people out of the store in droves. But the worst was that every organization under the sun was having a party, and she had to go to them all or suffer the consequences which were too horrible to contemplate.

So when Mona managed to sink into a pew at the Christmas Eve service it was not the big early service she had wanted to attend with all the choirs and candles. She hadn’t been able to get finished with things until almost ten, so she struggled in to the midnight service. And, for that service, she was early. She had read the paper wrong and got to the church a half hour before anyone else.

The room was silent except for a little traffic noise and the sound of the December wind. The lights were dim. Only the light on the cross and a great lighted Christmas star drew her attention. For long minutes Mona absorbed the silence and the lights shining in the darkness.  Bit by bit Mona softened from the inside out. She really needed to hear God say something comforting, but instead she saw light from a cross and a star shining in the darkness. When she took the light into her heart it was what she needed.