My favorite Christmas Story

Adapted from "Take Hold of Love," by Henry Carter,

Henry Carter was working feverishly on his Christmas sermon—the hardest time in any minister’s year to find something fresh to say—when the floor mother appeared at his study door. Another crisis upstairs. Christmas Eve was a difficult day for the emotionally disturbed children in the church home. Three-quarters of them went home at least overnight and the ones who remained reacted to the empty beds and the changed routine.

 Henry followed her up the stairs, chafing inwardly at the repeated interruptions. This time it was Tommy. He had crawled under a bed and refused to come out. The woman pointed to one of the six cots in the small dormitory. Not a hair or toe showed beneath it, so Henry addressed himself to the cowboys and bucking broncos on the bedspread. He talked about the brightly lighted tree in the church vestibule next door and the packages underneath it and all the other good things waiting for him out beyond the bed.

 No answer. 

Still fretting at the time this was costing, Henry dropped to his hands and knees and lifted the spread. Two enormous blue eyes met his. Tommy was eight, but looked like a five year old. It would have been no effort at all to pull him out.  But it wasn’t pulling that Tommy needed—it was trust and a sense of deciding things on his own initiative. So, crouched on all floors, the preacher launched into the menu of the special Christmas Eve supper to be offered after the service. He also told about the stocking with Tommy’s name on it provided by the Women’s Society.

Silence. There was no indication that Tommy heard or that he cared about Christmas.

 At last, because he could think of no other way to make contact, Henry got down on his stomach and wiggled in beside Tommy, bedsprings snagging his suit jacket. For what seemed like a long time Henry lay there with his cheek pressed against the floor. At first he talked about the big wreath above the altar and the candles in the windows. He reminded Tommy of the carol he and the other children were going to sing. Then running out of things to say the big man simply waited there beside the silent little boy.

 As he waited, a small, chilled hand crept into his large warm one.

“You know, Tommy,” Henry said after a bit. “It’s kind of close quarters under here. Let’s you and me go out where we can stand up.” And so they did, but slowly, in no hurry.

All the pressure had gone from the preacher’s day, because, you see, he had his Christmas sermon. Flattened there on the floor he realized he had been given a new glimpse of the mystery of the season.

 Hadn’t God called us, too, as Carter had called Tommy, from far above us? With His stars and mountains, His whole majestic creation, hadn’t He pleased with us to love Him, to enjoy the universe He gave us?

 And when we would not listen, He had drawn closer. Through prophets and lawgivers and holy men, He spoke with us face to face.

 But it was not until that first Christmas, until God stooped to earth itself, until He came to dwell with us in our loneliness and alienation, that we, like Tommy, dared to stretch out our hands to take hold of love.”