The Darkness
Stories
Contents
“The Darkness” by Keith Hewitt
“Unusual Christmas (Letter)” by David O. Bales
“A View From The Very Top” by David O. Bales
The Darkness
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 9:2-7
“In the 1960s, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration developed the Saturn Five.” As Levon watched, an image of a Saturn V rocket appeared and hovered above the classroom, lying on its side. “It was a hundred and ten meters tall, and ten meters in diameter at the base, though the succeeding upper stages — there were two of them — got progressively smaller in diameter. There were five main stage engines, creating seven and a half million pounds of thrust. Fueled for launch, it weighed nearly three million kilograms — most of which was burned off in the first thirteen minutes of flight.”
As the guest lecturer said that, flame and smoke — or a convincing simulation of them — billowed out of the main engines, and the rocket was launched toward the front of the classroom, where it appeared to vanish into the whiteboard. There were appropriate oohs and ahhs from the children, and she smiled. Say what you want, she thought, but sometimes the old ways of teaching are the best.
After an appropriate time of awed silence, Levon raised his hand and said, “Doctor Todd, what did they use it for?” He didn’t wait to be called on — a technical violation Doctor Todd and his teacher overlooked. Instead, the lecturer raised her own hand, moved her fingers in a particular motion, and the Saturn V stack reappeared hovering over the dozen students in the classroom, seeming to grow out from the middle..
She pointed at a small white structure at the very tip of the stack. “They used it to launch this — an Apollo spacecraft — to carry three men to the Moon.”
“All that, for three people?” he asked, his voice going up in disbelief.
She nodded. “That’s right, Levon — it’s Levon, right? Apollo carried three people. And all the rest of this — it was called a rocket — was used up or thrown away. Only this little bit, here — ” she walked under it, appeared to touch a small truncated cone at the tip, “actually returned to Earth, and then it was never used again. These space capsules, they were called, ended up in museums as historical displays.”
She snapped her fingers, and the image disappeared, shrinking to nothingness again at the center of the stack while she walked back to the front of the room. “I know it’s difficult to get a real sense of scale just from the holo, but this might help. At a hundred and eleven meters by thirty meters, one of these ‘rockets’ would have just barely fit into one of our farm bays.” She smiled again as she saw a glimmer of understanding in their eyes, and added, “Imagine, walking into a farm bay and seeing one of those lying on its side, filling up the space. They were truly incredible. Marvels of engineering.”
“What was it like to see one of these in person, Doctor Todd?” one of the girls asked.
“Doris — ” the teacher cut in, and the lecturer waved off whatever was coming next. She chuckled and shook her head. “I never saw one, Doris. Nobody has. I’m Second Gen, a hundred and twelve years old. There aren’t any First Gen crewmembers left on the Columbus, so nobody here has ever seen a Saturn Five, or an elephant, or a raincloud…” She trailed off wistfully, lost for a moment in the stories her parents used to tell her — fabulous tales of weather, and forests, and water that didn’t run through conduits.
It had all seemed wildly unlikely to her at the time.
She looked at the faces of the children, looking back at her with a mixture of disappointment and hope, and added thoughtfully, “I can tell you something I did see, though. When I was a little girl, just about your age, I saw the Sun.”
That got them. Their eyes widened and awe replaced disappointment — awe, and a little bit of healthy skepticism. She glanced at the teacher, saw the same look on her face, and couldn’t help but smile as she began to pull together her memories.
Christopher Columbus, a kilometer in diameter and five kilometers long, was a vessel built to deliver a colony of human beings from Earth to the Tau Ceti system, in one piece, and fit to plant a permanent human presence on a planet almost 12 light years and over a century away from home. Every piece of technology had to be no-fail or fail-safe, with multiple redundant systems, and where absolute reliability could not be guaranteed, the technology had to be repairable by generations of engineers and technicians not educated on Earth.
The ship, itself, was heavily armored, because at its cruising speed of 10% of the speed of light — some 30,000 kilometers per second — a collision with anything larger than a grain of sand could be catastrophic. As a consequence, the ship architects back on Earth had seen no need to introduce any unneeded chinks in the armor by creating viewing ports, or portholes, or anything of the sort. It’s not as though the ship would ever be steered manually; such luxuries were anachronisms.
And so the inhabitants of Christopher Columbus had been sealed in a windowless tube, plunging through the darkness of interstellar space, for six generations…
“You saw the Sun?” Levon gasped, after taking a moment to make sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.
“I did,” she confirmed.
“Our Sun — Earth’s Sun?” Doris asked; she could not hide the incredulity in her voice, as though their guest had said she’d ridden a unicorn to school.
“I remember it as clearly as though it were yesterday,” Doctor Todd answered. “Yes, I saw Earth’s Sun.” In answer to the excited chorus of “how,” and “what happened,” and “what was it like” — from everyone including the teacher — she began to recall…no, relive…the moment.
“My father was Second Engineer of the Third Watch on Columbus. When I was five — so about eight years after we left Earth — there was a malfunction in one of the instrument packages on the hull. I remember Dad being mad — he said it shouldn’t have happened, and somebody needed to get sued. And what really made him mad was that somebody had to go out and physically fix the package, replace a part or something. So he made his plans for the excursion, and after he’d had time to cool down, the day before he went out, he asked me if I wanted to go along.”
“No way!” Levon exclaimed.
“Oh yes, he asked. And my Mom was not happy, but he asked me and of course I said yes. So he took me out in one of the excursion pods. He was all business, at first — as soon as we left the pod bay he went to the instrument package and made the repairs, because the ship was the priority. While he was doing that, I just looked out the forward port. Space is so…dark. It’s absolutely black, with only these tiny pinpoints of light scattered through it, none of them very bright. The longer I looked, the more it felt like I might just fall through the port and get sucked into the darkness, falling forever in the space between stars. But then — ” She paused.
“Then what?” the teacher asked in hushed tones, speaking over a couple of students.
“Then before we went back to the pod bay, Dad steered the pod over to the other side of the ship. And he rolled it — all those pinpricks of light slid by the port, and I felt a little dizzy, and then we stopped. We stopped, and Dad leaned close to me and pointed out the forward port, and said, ‘That’s the Sun, Cammy Lou,’…but he didn’t have to. I just knew what it was. There, in the midst of all those dimensionless points of light, there was this one light — brighter than anything else in the sky. It had dimension, it had weight, it had — presence. I know it wasn’t as bright as our lights inside the Columbus, but somehow it seemed even brighter. It looked like…life, and hope, and it made my heart ache for its beauty, and what it stood for. I could have stared at it forever, while Dad told me stories about walking beneath a light so bright that it made you warm.”
She let that sink in, and there was not a sound in the room except for the gentle whisper of ventilation that was the background noise of life, never noticed by anyone, the same as the almost imperceptible throb of the great engines that kept them alive. When they had been silent for awhile, she began to speak again.
“Eventually, he brought us back to the pod bay, and we were sealed away inside the Columbus again. But I’ll never forget, while the bay was pressurizing, Dad told me that one day, the ship would reach Tau Ceti — we would come out of the void between stars and find ourselves in the presence of a light so bright that it could warm you from millions of miles away — light so bright you couldn’t even look at it.”
She closed her eyes, and for a moment she was sitting in the excursion pod with her father, again, and she softly repeated the promise he’d made: “’We will walk in the sunlight again. Maybe not you,’, he said, ‘or your children, but your children’s children will know what it’s like to leave the darkness behind and walk in the light — a light of new life and infinite possibilities. A light that will mean the promise of new hope for humanity has been fulfilled.’”
She chuckled softly. “I know, he sounds more like a poet than an engineer. But what he said has been with me ever since — it’s kept me going. I decided, that day, that I would walk under the sun again…but I was five, then, and I know now that’s not my decision to make — my time will come when my time will come. But you — you are the generation that will walk on new worlds, beneath a new sun and an old promise, and you will do new and wonderful things.”
Doctor Todd answered questions for a little longer, until a soft chime announced that it was time for lunch. The children reported to the cafeteria, and the teacher offered their guest her arm, while they walked toward the passageway to the residential area. As they walked, the teacher said curiously, “Do you actually believe that, Doctor Todd? What you told the children?” When she didn’t answer right away, the teacher went on. “You know there are people who say we’re lost — that there was an error, or a miscalculation, or something, and we’ve missed Tau Ceti. That we’re just lost in the darkness.”
Doctor Todd nodded, then. “I’ve heard the same thing. But, yes, I totally believe what I said — because I believe there is a plan, and the planners have been right about everything so far. The light is coming — and our people will see it. A new light, in a new time, with a new promise of life.” She patted the teacher’s hand comfortingly. “Trust me, dear — I can feel it. We’ve been in darkness long enough. Humans are a marvelously adaptable species — but we are not meant to live shut off from the light forever.”
And just ahead, Tau Ceti burned brightly…waiting…
* * *
Unusual Christmas (Letter)
David O. Bales
Titus 2:11-14
Over the seven years of his incarceration Junior’s mailing list had grown to 23. He added any contact who might respond to his communications. Only his sparse funds for postage limited those who received his near monthly requests for any assistance he could generate. Then came his annual Christmas letter. He wrote:
If people saw the return address and tossed this letter in the trash, I can’t blame them. But since you’ve opened this, I beg you to please keep reading. I’ve written things like this before, but this time, although I can’t expect you to believe me, I really mean it. Right up front, I’m not asking for anything, honest. I’ve mailed you letters asking for everything from legal aid, to money, to romance. About the only thing genuine in them was my telling you that I was desperate.
This year although Christmas might be the same for you, it’s different for me. More basically, I’m different. Hard to believe, I know; but, let me explain. I want to share with you two things that finally make sense to me.
FIRST: When I was a kid we all had to work on the farm, half a farm. No way to make a living on 29 acres, so Dad usually had a job in town and the three of us kids, no matter how young, were impressed into farm servitude. It was that or starve. Mom died when I was six. You did what Dad ordered or got a spanking. The punishment wasn’t to make you better, but to make you obey.
A couple times, however, when Dad had us all slaving away and I’d be complaining — I did it a lot — he actually said things to spur me on, not just to threaten me. One time was memorable. In the seventh grade he knew I wanted to play basketball and I was pretty scrawny and didn’t have much of a chance to make the cut. He stopped beside the fence post hole we were digging, leaned on his shovel, and spoke to me with no anger in his voice or threat on his face, “Junior, consider it exercise” — as though a different word transferred the activity into a different realm of existence. Certainly it was his way to get me to work harder, at least to stop my grousing. Can’t say it spurred me to greater farm productivity, athletic achievement, or a higher opinion of Dad. But it was one of the few clearly reasonable things he said to any of us and the memory stuck.
SECOND: Old Thruman is the chaplain here. Been at Ryeson for 20 years. I figure during that time he’s never had an original thought, certainly not an original sermon, always with his lame attempt at religious humor, “Confession is good for the cell.”
I’ve been here seven years and three months. All that time I’ve been pounding my mind (sometimes also my head) against the wall. I now admit that I’ve done little to genuinely help myself, and I’ve had plenty of people to tell me just that. “Get with the program,” they say. They’ve tagged a name on me: “whining wimp.” You bet it bothers me! Could be that such a nasty name thrown at me has contributed to my finally listening to old Thruman. The chapel is one of the few rooms that has windows, behind bars of course, some stained glass and some plain glass. I make sure that on Sundays I sit near the clear window. Not much to see, exercise yard and a fence topped with swirls of razor wire. Thruman is dull. Oh how he is dull, but at least he reads the Bible to us and prisoners can sit safely through his sermons, dream of freedom, or plan future crimes.
A few Sundays ago looking out the window and ignoring Thruman, it’s like my thinking shifted gears, ground a few gears to get there, but shifted. Right there on my usual stool in row eight — metal and bolted to the floor, painted with the same dull, puke yellow — it was like a double door exploding open. I actually thought about the God, the Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that Thruman mentions a dozen times a sermon. They were right. I can’t put it any other way, because I faced that I was wrong. I’m not innocent. I was an accessory to the crime. The judgment was fair. Can’t say I hold the same opinion of the sentence, but so I get it said: I’m guilty.
I’ve never wanted to think of being in prison as training for a better life. That just doesn’t happen much and no one except old Thruman and a few of the staff pretend it does. But I’m here to tell you it’s happened at least once. I testified dishonestly in my trial, but now I testify to the truth of what God has done in Christ, not just at a Christmas long ago, but now. Something new from God has been born in my life and I intend from now on to take Christian training seriously.
An odd Christmas letter, I admit, but the only one worth my writing — at Christmas or any other time. A blessed Christmas to you all. Please keep praying for me.
From Ryeson State Penitentiary,
Junior P. Edwards
Preaching point: Believers need training in how and why to live for Christ.
* * *
A View From The Very Top
by David O. Bales
Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
The angel for the only time since creation had spoken his piece. He’d practiced it throughout eternity and delivered it surrounded by the glorious solemnity that accompanies a heavenly being: “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
Then it was over, his individual task completed. The angel gazed across time with the realization he’d never perform another singular assignment. He melted back into the mass of angels and joined to praise God and promise peace on earth.
Yet … yet, the experience had affected him as he hadn’t anticipated: from heaven to earth, from eternity to time, from hiddenness to visibility. He’d participated in one of those rare angelic events, a lone angel. Michael or Gabriel, yes, they were dispatched alone and a handful of others here and there, but this angel was one of the few graced to step out of the ranks, distinct from God’s heavenly troops, to touch the human realm. In a human’s blink the further weight of the event surged into his awareness after he’d observed firsthand the confusing and misled antics of humans and his part in correcting it.
His thinking, in the space of a lightning strike, flashed in two directions: joy for what was now planted on the earth with this birth in Bethlehem and wonder at his role in the event. In that instant he sensed God’s eternal love embracing the planet. He followed Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection. He knew the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. Such is the privilege of spiritual beings, which is satisfying beyond anything earthly, along with the gratification of seeing humans nearly scared out of their hair when an angel approaches them.
Yet … yet, he was distracted by this nearer, inside-out experience of human life. His preliminary instruction had only covered elementary information about relations between angels and humans. Basically he was God’s spokesman which, if God so chose, God could brush aside and take the place of the emissary. When you’re God you get to do things like that. An angel is just a spiritual delegate delivering God’s message and activating God’s work on earth.
No matter his knowing of Jesus’ ultimate victory, what disturbed him was the future for his fellow angels. He was overwhelmed and consumed in his task for God and Jesus. That’s why he couldn’t help but deplore what would become of angels.
Before he’d been designated to report the good news of the Messiah to the world, he’d been informed, along with all of heaven’s angels, not only what was to come of Jesus, but what would become of God’s angels. For all he’d tried to erase it from his memory, the terrible news had struck him and all of heaven’s angels like the pealing of doom.
“Jesus must increase,” the archangel said, “and we all must decrease.” Sounded eternally appropriate. That summarized any angel’s task, God’s ambassador. But the archangel continued, “After Jesus’ resurrection his believers will often concentrate upon you instead of upon him,” at which heaven shook with angelic grumbling. He continued, “They will say you have wings and feathers,” which brought a gasp sweeping through heaven like the explosion of a thousand volcanoes. “From being God’s ‘holy ones,’ they’ll turn you into trinkets like pagans worship, cute little idols tacked on refrigerators, posted in gardens, and dangling from rear-view mirrors. You will even be downgraded by official translations of the Bible. Instead of noting that you are God’s troops, the translators will call you ‘hosts,’ as though everyone knows what that is. They’ll expect that you’re all inviting them to lunch. They’ll treat you like a carryout person at the grocery store, a parking attendant, or a magic wand. They’ll even refer to other humans, especially babies, as “such an angel.”
The angels were used to abiding what other religions thought of them, confusing them with stars, moon, sun, or underling gods. At least such perversions were somewhat exalted. But when the angels heard what Jesus’ believers were going to do to them, they leaped into a thundering grumble that shook heaven for an aeon …, or a second in human calculation.
“But, think about it,” the Archangel continued, attempting to mollify God’s spiritual army, “if people trivialize God, won’t they trivialize you?” At which a saddening silence struck the ranks. “No matter what people think of you, your task on earth will be to serve God invisibly, which is exactly what Jesus will do visibly. And people? Many will sentence Jesus forever to a manger, as they will demote him from Lord to teacher or reduce him from Savior to martyr.”
What more was there to say … or to do? The angels will continue steadfastly delivering God’s messages and rattling creation with praise. They will remain faithful, as will their Lord Jesus, until his resurrection finally flips human life upside down, recreates the totality of existence, and releases all angels to perform forever their intended and most joyful function: Praising God in the highest.
Preaching point: Christmas is centered completely on Jesus, not angels.
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StoryShare, December 25, 2019 issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
All rights reserved. Subscribers to the StoryShare service may print and use this material as it was intended in sermons, in worship and classroom settings, in brief devotions, in radio spots, and as newsletter fillers. No additional permission is required from the publisher for such use by subscribers only. Inquiries should be addressed to permissions@csspub.com or to Permissions, CSS Publishing Company, Inc., 5450 N. Dixie Highway, Lima, Ohio 45807.
“The Darkness” by Keith Hewitt
“Unusual Christmas (Letter)” by David O. Bales
“A View From The Very Top” by David O. Bales
The Darkness
by Keith Hewitt
Isaiah 9:2-7
“In the 1960s, the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration developed the Saturn Five.” As Levon watched, an image of a Saturn V rocket appeared and hovered above the classroom, lying on its side. “It was a hundred and ten meters tall, and ten meters in diameter at the base, though the succeeding upper stages — there were two of them — got progressively smaller in diameter. There were five main stage engines, creating seven and a half million pounds of thrust. Fueled for launch, it weighed nearly three million kilograms — most of which was burned off in the first thirteen minutes of flight.”
As the guest lecturer said that, flame and smoke — or a convincing simulation of them — billowed out of the main engines, and the rocket was launched toward the front of the classroom, where it appeared to vanish into the whiteboard. There were appropriate oohs and ahhs from the children, and she smiled. Say what you want, she thought, but sometimes the old ways of teaching are the best.
After an appropriate time of awed silence, Levon raised his hand and said, “Doctor Todd, what did they use it for?” He didn’t wait to be called on — a technical violation Doctor Todd and his teacher overlooked. Instead, the lecturer raised her own hand, moved her fingers in a particular motion, and the Saturn V stack reappeared hovering over the dozen students in the classroom, seeming to grow out from the middle..
She pointed at a small white structure at the very tip of the stack. “They used it to launch this — an Apollo spacecraft — to carry three men to the Moon.”
“All that, for three people?” he asked, his voice going up in disbelief.
She nodded. “That’s right, Levon — it’s Levon, right? Apollo carried three people. And all the rest of this — it was called a rocket — was used up or thrown away. Only this little bit, here — ” she walked under it, appeared to touch a small truncated cone at the tip, “actually returned to Earth, and then it was never used again. These space capsules, they were called, ended up in museums as historical displays.”
She snapped her fingers, and the image disappeared, shrinking to nothingness again at the center of the stack while she walked back to the front of the room. “I know it’s difficult to get a real sense of scale just from the holo, but this might help. At a hundred and eleven meters by thirty meters, one of these ‘rockets’ would have just barely fit into one of our farm bays.” She smiled again as she saw a glimmer of understanding in their eyes, and added, “Imagine, walking into a farm bay and seeing one of those lying on its side, filling up the space. They were truly incredible. Marvels of engineering.”
“What was it like to see one of these in person, Doctor Todd?” one of the girls asked.
“Doris — ” the teacher cut in, and the lecturer waved off whatever was coming next. She chuckled and shook her head. “I never saw one, Doris. Nobody has. I’m Second Gen, a hundred and twelve years old. There aren’t any First Gen crewmembers left on the Columbus, so nobody here has ever seen a Saturn Five, or an elephant, or a raincloud…” She trailed off wistfully, lost for a moment in the stories her parents used to tell her — fabulous tales of weather, and forests, and water that didn’t run through conduits.
It had all seemed wildly unlikely to her at the time.
She looked at the faces of the children, looking back at her with a mixture of disappointment and hope, and added thoughtfully, “I can tell you something I did see, though. When I was a little girl, just about your age, I saw the Sun.”
That got them. Their eyes widened and awe replaced disappointment — awe, and a little bit of healthy skepticism. She glanced at the teacher, saw the same look on her face, and couldn’t help but smile as she began to pull together her memories.
Christopher Columbus, a kilometer in diameter and five kilometers long, was a vessel built to deliver a colony of human beings from Earth to the Tau Ceti system, in one piece, and fit to plant a permanent human presence on a planet almost 12 light years and over a century away from home. Every piece of technology had to be no-fail or fail-safe, with multiple redundant systems, and where absolute reliability could not be guaranteed, the technology had to be repairable by generations of engineers and technicians not educated on Earth.
The ship, itself, was heavily armored, because at its cruising speed of 10% of the speed of light — some 30,000 kilometers per second — a collision with anything larger than a grain of sand could be catastrophic. As a consequence, the ship architects back on Earth had seen no need to introduce any unneeded chinks in the armor by creating viewing ports, or portholes, or anything of the sort. It’s not as though the ship would ever be steered manually; such luxuries were anachronisms.
And so the inhabitants of Christopher Columbus had been sealed in a windowless tube, plunging through the darkness of interstellar space, for six generations…
“You saw the Sun?” Levon gasped, after taking a moment to make sure he’d heard what he thought he’d heard.
“I did,” she confirmed.
“Our Sun — Earth’s Sun?” Doris asked; she could not hide the incredulity in her voice, as though their guest had said she’d ridden a unicorn to school.
“I remember it as clearly as though it were yesterday,” Doctor Todd answered. “Yes, I saw Earth’s Sun.” In answer to the excited chorus of “how,” and “what happened,” and “what was it like” — from everyone including the teacher — she began to recall…no, relive…the moment.
“My father was Second Engineer of the Third Watch on Columbus. When I was five — so about eight years after we left Earth — there was a malfunction in one of the instrument packages on the hull. I remember Dad being mad — he said it shouldn’t have happened, and somebody needed to get sued. And what really made him mad was that somebody had to go out and physically fix the package, replace a part or something. So he made his plans for the excursion, and after he’d had time to cool down, the day before he went out, he asked me if I wanted to go along.”
“No way!” Levon exclaimed.
“Oh yes, he asked. And my Mom was not happy, but he asked me and of course I said yes. So he took me out in one of the excursion pods. He was all business, at first — as soon as we left the pod bay he went to the instrument package and made the repairs, because the ship was the priority. While he was doing that, I just looked out the forward port. Space is so…dark. It’s absolutely black, with only these tiny pinpoints of light scattered through it, none of them very bright. The longer I looked, the more it felt like I might just fall through the port and get sucked into the darkness, falling forever in the space between stars. But then — ” She paused.
“Then what?” the teacher asked in hushed tones, speaking over a couple of students.
“Then before we went back to the pod bay, Dad steered the pod over to the other side of the ship. And he rolled it — all those pinpricks of light slid by the port, and I felt a little dizzy, and then we stopped. We stopped, and Dad leaned close to me and pointed out the forward port, and said, ‘That’s the Sun, Cammy Lou,’…but he didn’t have to. I just knew what it was. There, in the midst of all those dimensionless points of light, there was this one light — brighter than anything else in the sky. It had dimension, it had weight, it had — presence. I know it wasn’t as bright as our lights inside the Columbus, but somehow it seemed even brighter. It looked like…life, and hope, and it made my heart ache for its beauty, and what it stood for. I could have stared at it forever, while Dad told me stories about walking beneath a light so bright that it made you warm.”
She let that sink in, and there was not a sound in the room except for the gentle whisper of ventilation that was the background noise of life, never noticed by anyone, the same as the almost imperceptible throb of the great engines that kept them alive. When they had been silent for awhile, she began to speak again.
“Eventually, he brought us back to the pod bay, and we were sealed away inside the Columbus again. But I’ll never forget, while the bay was pressurizing, Dad told me that one day, the ship would reach Tau Ceti — we would come out of the void between stars and find ourselves in the presence of a light so bright that it could warm you from millions of miles away — light so bright you couldn’t even look at it.”
She closed her eyes, and for a moment she was sitting in the excursion pod with her father, again, and she softly repeated the promise he’d made: “’We will walk in the sunlight again. Maybe not you,’, he said, ‘or your children, but your children’s children will know what it’s like to leave the darkness behind and walk in the light — a light of new life and infinite possibilities. A light that will mean the promise of new hope for humanity has been fulfilled.’”
She chuckled softly. “I know, he sounds more like a poet than an engineer. But what he said has been with me ever since — it’s kept me going. I decided, that day, that I would walk under the sun again…but I was five, then, and I know now that’s not my decision to make — my time will come when my time will come. But you — you are the generation that will walk on new worlds, beneath a new sun and an old promise, and you will do new and wonderful things.”
Doctor Todd answered questions for a little longer, until a soft chime announced that it was time for lunch. The children reported to the cafeteria, and the teacher offered their guest her arm, while they walked toward the passageway to the residential area. As they walked, the teacher said curiously, “Do you actually believe that, Doctor Todd? What you told the children?” When she didn’t answer right away, the teacher went on. “You know there are people who say we’re lost — that there was an error, or a miscalculation, or something, and we’ve missed Tau Ceti. That we’re just lost in the darkness.”
Doctor Todd nodded, then. “I’ve heard the same thing. But, yes, I totally believe what I said — because I believe there is a plan, and the planners have been right about everything so far. The light is coming — and our people will see it. A new light, in a new time, with a new promise of life.” She patted the teacher’s hand comfortingly. “Trust me, dear — I can feel it. We’ve been in darkness long enough. Humans are a marvelously adaptable species — but we are not meant to live shut off from the light forever.”
And just ahead, Tau Ceti burned brightly…waiting…
* * *
Unusual Christmas (Letter)
David O. Bales
Titus 2:11-14
Over the seven years of his incarceration Junior’s mailing list had grown to 23. He added any contact who might respond to his communications. Only his sparse funds for postage limited those who received his near monthly requests for any assistance he could generate. Then came his annual Christmas letter. He wrote:
If people saw the return address and tossed this letter in the trash, I can’t blame them. But since you’ve opened this, I beg you to please keep reading. I’ve written things like this before, but this time, although I can’t expect you to believe me, I really mean it. Right up front, I’m not asking for anything, honest. I’ve mailed you letters asking for everything from legal aid, to money, to romance. About the only thing genuine in them was my telling you that I was desperate.
This year although Christmas might be the same for you, it’s different for me. More basically, I’m different. Hard to believe, I know; but, let me explain. I want to share with you two things that finally make sense to me.
FIRST: When I was a kid we all had to work on the farm, half a farm. No way to make a living on 29 acres, so Dad usually had a job in town and the three of us kids, no matter how young, were impressed into farm servitude. It was that or starve. Mom died when I was six. You did what Dad ordered or got a spanking. The punishment wasn’t to make you better, but to make you obey.
A couple times, however, when Dad had us all slaving away and I’d be complaining — I did it a lot — he actually said things to spur me on, not just to threaten me. One time was memorable. In the seventh grade he knew I wanted to play basketball and I was pretty scrawny and didn’t have much of a chance to make the cut. He stopped beside the fence post hole we were digging, leaned on his shovel, and spoke to me with no anger in his voice or threat on his face, “Junior, consider it exercise” — as though a different word transferred the activity into a different realm of existence. Certainly it was his way to get me to work harder, at least to stop my grousing. Can’t say it spurred me to greater farm productivity, athletic achievement, or a higher opinion of Dad. But it was one of the few clearly reasonable things he said to any of us and the memory stuck.
SECOND: Old Thruman is the chaplain here. Been at Ryeson for 20 years. I figure during that time he’s never had an original thought, certainly not an original sermon, always with his lame attempt at religious humor, “Confession is good for the cell.”
I’ve been here seven years and three months. All that time I’ve been pounding my mind (sometimes also my head) against the wall. I now admit that I’ve done little to genuinely help myself, and I’ve had plenty of people to tell me just that. “Get with the program,” they say. They’ve tagged a name on me: “whining wimp.” You bet it bothers me! Could be that such a nasty name thrown at me has contributed to my finally listening to old Thruman. The chapel is one of the few rooms that has windows, behind bars of course, some stained glass and some plain glass. I make sure that on Sundays I sit near the clear window. Not much to see, exercise yard and a fence topped with swirls of razor wire. Thruman is dull. Oh how he is dull, but at least he reads the Bible to us and prisoners can sit safely through his sermons, dream of freedom, or plan future crimes.
A few Sundays ago looking out the window and ignoring Thruman, it’s like my thinking shifted gears, ground a few gears to get there, but shifted. Right there on my usual stool in row eight — metal and bolted to the floor, painted with the same dull, puke yellow — it was like a double door exploding open. I actually thought about the God, the Jesus, and the Holy Spirit that Thruman mentions a dozen times a sermon. They were right. I can’t put it any other way, because I faced that I was wrong. I’m not innocent. I was an accessory to the crime. The judgment was fair. Can’t say I hold the same opinion of the sentence, but so I get it said: I’m guilty.
I’ve never wanted to think of being in prison as training for a better life. That just doesn’t happen much and no one except old Thruman and a few of the staff pretend it does. But I’m here to tell you it’s happened at least once. I testified dishonestly in my trial, but now I testify to the truth of what God has done in Christ, not just at a Christmas long ago, but now. Something new from God has been born in my life and I intend from now on to take Christian training seriously.
An odd Christmas letter, I admit, but the only one worth my writing — at Christmas or any other time. A blessed Christmas to you all. Please keep praying for me.
From Ryeson State Penitentiary,
Junior P. Edwards
Preaching point: Believers need training in how and why to live for Christ.
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A View From The Very Top
by David O. Bales
Luke 2:1-14, (15-20)
The angel for the only time since creation had spoken his piece. He’d practiced it throughout eternity and delivered it surrounded by the glorious solemnity that accompanies a heavenly being: “Do not be afraid; for see — I am bringing you good news of great joy for all the people: to you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, who is the Messiah, the Lord. This will be a sign for you: you will find a child wrapped in bands of cloth and lying in a manger.”
Then it was over, his individual task completed. The angel gazed across time with the realization he’d never perform another singular assignment. He melted back into the mass of angels and joined to praise God and promise peace on earth.
Yet … yet, the experience had affected him as he hadn’t anticipated: from heaven to earth, from eternity to time, from hiddenness to visibility. He’d participated in one of those rare angelic events, a lone angel. Michael or Gabriel, yes, they were dispatched alone and a handful of others here and there, but this angel was one of the few graced to step out of the ranks, distinct from God’s heavenly troops, to touch the human realm. In a human’s blink the further weight of the event surged into his awareness after he’d observed firsthand the confusing and misled antics of humans and his part in correcting it.
His thinking, in the space of a lightning strike, flashed in two directions: joy for what was now planted on the earth with this birth in Bethlehem and wonder at his role in the event. In that instant he sensed God’s eternal love embracing the planet. He followed Jesus’ life and ministry, his death and resurrection. He knew the end from the beginning and the beginning from the end. Such is the privilege of spiritual beings, which is satisfying beyond anything earthly, along with the gratification of seeing humans nearly scared out of their hair when an angel approaches them.
Yet … yet, he was distracted by this nearer, inside-out experience of human life. His preliminary instruction had only covered elementary information about relations between angels and humans. Basically he was God’s spokesman which, if God so chose, God could brush aside and take the place of the emissary. When you’re God you get to do things like that. An angel is just a spiritual delegate delivering God’s message and activating God’s work on earth.
No matter his knowing of Jesus’ ultimate victory, what disturbed him was the future for his fellow angels. He was overwhelmed and consumed in his task for God and Jesus. That’s why he couldn’t help but deplore what would become of angels.
Before he’d been designated to report the good news of the Messiah to the world, he’d been informed, along with all of heaven’s angels, not only what was to come of Jesus, but what would become of God’s angels. For all he’d tried to erase it from his memory, the terrible news had struck him and all of heaven’s angels like the pealing of doom.
“Jesus must increase,” the archangel said, “and we all must decrease.” Sounded eternally appropriate. That summarized any angel’s task, God’s ambassador. But the archangel continued, “After Jesus’ resurrection his believers will often concentrate upon you instead of upon him,” at which heaven shook with angelic grumbling. He continued, “They will say you have wings and feathers,” which brought a gasp sweeping through heaven like the explosion of a thousand volcanoes. “From being God’s ‘holy ones,’ they’ll turn you into trinkets like pagans worship, cute little idols tacked on refrigerators, posted in gardens, and dangling from rear-view mirrors. You will even be downgraded by official translations of the Bible. Instead of noting that you are God’s troops, the translators will call you ‘hosts,’ as though everyone knows what that is. They’ll expect that you’re all inviting them to lunch. They’ll treat you like a carryout person at the grocery store, a parking attendant, or a magic wand. They’ll even refer to other humans, especially babies, as “such an angel.”
The angels were used to abiding what other religions thought of them, confusing them with stars, moon, sun, or underling gods. At least such perversions were somewhat exalted. But when the angels heard what Jesus’ believers were going to do to them, they leaped into a thundering grumble that shook heaven for an aeon …, or a second in human calculation.
“But, think about it,” the Archangel continued, attempting to mollify God’s spiritual army, “if people trivialize God, won’t they trivialize you?” At which a saddening silence struck the ranks. “No matter what people think of you, your task on earth will be to serve God invisibly, which is exactly what Jesus will do visibly. And people? Many will sentence Jesus forever to a manger, as they will demote him from Lord to teacher or reduce him from Savior to martyr.”
What more was there to say … or to do? The angels will continue steadfastly delivering God’s messages and rattling creation with praise. They will remain faithful, as will their Lord Jesus, until his resurrection finally flips human life upside down, recreates the totality of existence, and releases all angels to perform forever their intended and most joyful function: Praising God in the highest.
Preaching point: Christmas is centered completely on Jesus, not angels.
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StoryShare, December 25, 2019 issue.
Copyright 2019 by CSS Publishing Company, Inc., Lima, Ohio.
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