Magyar Egyház, 1953 (32. évfolyam, 1-10. szám)
1953-10-01 / 10. szám
12 MAGYAR EGYHÁZ the hardness of the face that should have been soft and young. His heart ached when he thought of the day Ella Harvey would begin to taste the dregs of the cup of lust she had chosen to drink. And there was Tom Onestad, a little shabby, a little shamefaced, a little uneasy beside his wife. Poor Tom, whose name had become a synonym for a hopeless drunkard. Old Nicolai couldn’t help but overhear Grace Peterson and Olga Grimsrud talking. They were standing so near to him. “You look tired, Grace.” “I am tired. Too much Christmas, I guess.” She had a sharp voice, that Grace Peterson. “Sometimes I get sick of it—all the work and fuss. But one has to do all that for the children, you know.” “I know.” Olga nodded her head in agreement. “It seems like the older you get the more you realize that Christmas is really for children.” The husbands came in just then and old Nicolai watched them enter the sanctuary together. He turned to ring the bell again, but his heart was not in it. “The older you get the more you realize that Christmas is really for children.” Over and over again, like a disharmonious accompaniment to the first hymn, the words repeated themselves in his mind. Of course, maybe these two women didn’t mean much by saying that. Yet it bothered him. He thought of the overwhelming joy he had felt walking to church this morning. People said sometimes you become childish when you grow old. Was that what was happening to him? He shook his head. No, Christmas had always been wonderful—all these 79 years. Only it became more wonderful every year, and this was the best of them all. Old Nicolai raised his head. He had long thought that Christ seemed to be disappearing from the Christmases of the people in Poplar Grove. He looked at the congregation before him. Were the people of Zion, too, beginning to feel that Christmas was really just for Children? It was such a common thing to see the toys in the window downtown for weeks before Christmas, pictures of Santa Claus, the excitement of children around the tree, Sunday school programs. Did people feel that carols, too, were just nice children’s songs, that even the Christmas Gospel was a beautiful little story, but really for children? With a start old Nicolai realized that the pastor was reading the familiar second chapter of St. Luke. Ashamed of how his mind had wandered, he rose slowly to his feet, a little after the others. The pastor’s clear, rich voice carried to the ear of the bell-ringer of Zion in the very last chair by the door. “And the angel said unto them, Be not afraid; for behold, I bring you good tiding of great joy which shall be to all the people: For there is born to you this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ the Lord.” Nicolai tried to straighten his bent shoulders. “Be not afraid.” Why, that didn’t belong only to little girls in braids. That was the Word of God to men like John Ölesen whose soul was haunted by remembrance of secret sins, whose mind was tormented by the fear that there was no forgiveness for him. “Be not afraid.” That was God’s message to people like Esther Yngve who knew that months of great suffering lay between her and certain death. “I bring you good tidings of great joy.” That wasn’t only for the Junior Choir sitting up in the front rows. It was for people like Amy Hansen who had just been widowed and left with four small children. “There is born to you this day in the city of D'avid a Savior, who is Christ the Lord.” Ah, no, that wasn’t only for the tiny one whose parents had brought them to Christ. That was for a girl like El) a Harvey who refused to consider her body as a temple of God. That was for a prodigal son like Tom Onestand who had been living in the far country wasting his substance in riotous living. Ah, Zion congregation, do you not see that the Christmas story is for you, all of you, just as it is for me, old Nicolai Berntson? He wished he could cry it aloud. And Grace Peterson and Olga Grimsrud had decided that Christmas was really for Children! The service was over and old Nicolai reached up a trembling hand to ring the bell. But the trembling this time was not because he was an old man, nor yet because he had walked too far this morning, nor even because he was happy. It was because his spirit was troubled. When the last lingerer had gone, Nicolai Berntson turned to face the pastor who had placed his hand on the bell-ringer’s shoulder. “Something wrong, Nicolai?” The old mans agitation was mirrored in his faded blue yes. “Pastor, the people of Zion are beginning to think that Christmas is only for children,” said old Nicolai. He didn’t want it to, but now his voice was trembling, too. That was the way when you grew older. You couldn’t always control that trembling. Pastor Johan was a very young man. And a very young man cannot always understand the thinking of a very old man. So Pastor Johan was silent for a moment. He did not quite know what to say. For he did not quite understand. “I heard someone say it—this morning.” Then suddenly Pastor Johan understood. How he longed for wisdom to say a word that would ease the burden of his old friend. Into his mind came the first line of a song his wife had been singing around the house. “Only the child-like find the way . . Pastor Johan smiled. “Why, Nicolai, that’s really so, you know. Christmas is for children.” The old man looked pained, disappointed. Surely not the pastor too! . . . “They didn’t know they were right, but they were.” Pastor Johan paused. “Except ye turn, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven,” he said. . . . Old Nicolai stood pondering for some moments, then—tears of happiness glistened in the old man’s eyes, and a gnarled, trembling hand reached out to clasp a strong, steady one.
