Historical setting: 561 C.E. Gaul
Nightfall, and Eve is inside preparing and I’m out here tending the fire and stirring the pot. I hear them coming – Celeste and Daniel are racing up the hill, playful and chattering. Ezra and Colleta with the baby are taking their own good time for the slow trudge.
“Daniel, Celeste come with me away from the garden so we can gather more sticks for the fire!”
“Gra’papa, how will we see to find the sticks? It is so dark.”
“It’s not too dark even with no moon. See, the stars make a whole trail of light. Look up.”
Looking up we stop in the frosty night, just the three of us overcome with the ancient awe – the eternity of angel source is spread before our eyes.
“Tell us the Jesus story of this, Gra’papa!”
“The story I know of the winter sky was there before any Jesus story was ever told. When they wrapped the Jesus story in baby rags for the gospel telling of it the sky had already made a song of it for the stars to dance too. When the shepherds saw the sky, even when it is the same sky they knew so well they were still amazed. They stood up to watch – and that night an angel walked right down that glittering pathway of light you still see there and then what do you think the shepherds did?”
Daniel was clinging to me with his shivers. “I think it was so dark and so strange that they just started screaming and running away!”
“Probably that would be what would happen except that the angel with a very bold voice thundered the words from God, ‘Don’t be afraid!’ They just froze in place because they knew they couldn’t run away now that the angel saw them. ‘I bring you good news of a great joy for all the people!’ the angel said that.”
“So they were all happy again,” Celeste suggests lightly as she discovers a stick for the fire.
The spell is broken. We gather sticks and put off the story until later.
(The story continues tomorrow)
Lazarus Ink 