|
The Most Blessed Season
CONNIE: There’s something different about this time of the year—almost
anywhere you go in the world. But what is it that makes it so special?
Join us today for a look at the most special time of you Giving God’s
trumpet a Certain Sound for more than 70 years, this is the Voice of Prophecy.
CONNIE: Hello, I’m Connie Jeffery,
LONNIE: And I’m Lonnie Melashenko. We’re glad you’ve
joined us today for our Christmas broadcast. We’re going to break out
of our usual format, to focus on one of the things that makes Christmas
most enjoyable.
CONNIE: And that’s the music. When you think about it,
Christmas is the only time of year that comes complete with its own special
songs that are recognized all around the world.
LONNIE: Christmas has become almost a universal holiday—it’s
amazing if you live in parts of the world where there aren’t many Christians,
even there you’ll often see Christmas decorations.
CONNIE: And of course Christmas sales in the stores.
LONNIE: It really is too bad that the holiday that celebrates
God’s greatest gift to the world has become commercialized and focused
on profit margins in stores, but we hope we can redeem the season by focusing
instead on what it’s all about—remembering that Jesus Christ came into
the world as a tiny baby, with one purpose: To save us and redeem us from
this world.
CONNIE: Our program today will center around the music
of Christmas, and one of our favorite Christmas stories. Each of the members
of our production staff is going to share his or her favorite Christmas
song, and then Lonnie will share a Christmas story, followed by more music.
LONNIE: We hope you enjoy our special Christmas gift
of music. Connie—I think you’re going first, with your musical selection.
CONNIE: Well Lonnie, one of my favorites is the spiritual
“Sweet Little Jesus Boy”, and one of my all time favorite singers is my
good friend and yours Walter Arties. We are so lucky to have Walter as
part of our VOP team. Why don’t we listen now to his silky tenor voice
singing “Sweet Little Jesus Boy”
LONNIE: I’ve always loved to hear Walter sing, and we’re so glad to have
him as part of our VOP family now.
There’s another part of our family, that you hear about from time to time
when we thank Armando Cordero for his good work as our studio engineer.
But we usually don’t get a chance to have him on this side of the studio
glass. Armando, join us for just a moment, and tell us about your selection
as your favorite Christmas song.
ARMANDO: Well Lonnie, the song “DO You Hear What I Hear”
brings back memories to me from when I first came here to sing with La
Voz, the Spanish VOP. This song was recorded for a Christmas video just
two weeks after we started singing as the Spanish King’s Heralds Quartet.
I like the way this song tells the story of Jesus birth, as seen through
a little boy’s eyes
CONNIE: Lonnie, what’s your favorite Christmas song?
LONNIE: Well I heard it first as a little lad back in
the 1950's when our family moved to the US and we had a radio. It was
done by the Harry Simione Corral called, “The Little Drummer Boy”. Well
recently that song has been redone by the Heralds quartet, acapella complete
with the Rump-A- rump-boom, and it still gives me chills.
CONNIE: Amen! That was beautiful! You know, that has
to be one of the most amazing versions of that song that I have ever heard
LONNIE: Connie, I get tears, I get choked up every time
I hear it, and I could hear it fifty times and never get tired
CONNIE: Just puts us in the Christmas spirit doesn’t
Lonnie?
LONNIE: That’s only as Wayne Hooper could arrange it
in the Heralds quartet.
CONNIE: That would be Jim, Jack, Jerry and Don.
LONNIE: There’s no limit to the ways’ of telling the
story of Christmas through music.
CONNIE: Christmas is a special time of year in many
ways. One of the neatest things is the Christmas stories—of course you
can buy whole collections of stories about special things that happened
on Christmas, and one of our favorites here at Voice of Prophecy was written
for us several years ago. It’s a story of a small boy, and a miraculous
exchange of gifts, and Lonnie is going to share that story with us now.
The story was written by Diane Rayner. She tells the story like this:
The Most Blessed Sea Story written by Diane Rayner
I grew up believing that Christmas was a time when
strange and wonderful things happened, when wise and royal visitors came
riding, when at midnight the barnyard animals talked to one another, and
in the light of a fabulous star God came down to us as a little child.
Christmas to me has always been a time of enchantment, and never more
so than the year that my son Marty was eight.
That was the year that my children and I moved into a cozy trailer home
in a forested area just outside of Redmond, Washington. As the holiday
approached, our spirits were light, not to be dampened even by the winter
rains that swept down Puget Sound to douse our home and make our floors
muddy.
Throughout that December Marty had been the most spirited, and busiest,
of us all. He was my youngest, a cheerful boy, blond-haired and playful,
with a quaint habit of looking up at you and cocking his head like a puppy
when you talked to him. Actually the reason for this was that Marty was
deaf in his left ear, but it was a condition that he never complained
about.
For weeks I’d been watching Marty. I knew that something was going on
with him that he was not telling me about. I saw how eagerly he made his
bed, took out the trash, and carefully set the table and helped Rick and
Pam prepare dinner before I got home from work. I saw how he silently
collected his tiny allowance and tucked it away, spending not a cent of
it. I had no idea what all this quiet activity was about, but I suspected
that somehow it had something to do with Kenny.
Kenny was Marty’s friend, and ever since they’d found each other in the
springtime, they were seldom apart. If you called to one, you got them
both. Their world was in the meadow, a horse pasture broken by a small
winding stream, where the boys caught frogs and snakes, where they’d search
for arrowheads or hidden treasure; or where they’d spend an afternoon
feeding peanuts to the squirrels. Or peanut butter when they ran out of
nuts!
Times were hard for our little family, and we had to
do some scrimping to get by. With my job as a meat wrapper and with a
lot of ingenuity around the trailer, we managed to have elegance on a
shoestring. But not Kenny’s family. They were desperately poor, and his
mother was having a real struggle to feed and clothe her two children.
They were a good solid family; but Kenny’s mom was a proud woman, very
proud, and she had strict rules.
How we worked, as we did each year, to make our home
festive for the holiday! Ours was a handcrafted Christmas of gifts hidden
away and ornaments strung about the place.
Marty and Kenny would sometimes sit still at the table long enough to
help make cornucopias or weave little baskets for the tree; but then,
in a flash, one would whisper to the other, and they would be out the
door and sliding cautiously under the electric fence into the horse pasture
that separated our home from Kenny’s.
One night shortly before Christmas, when my hands were deep in pepper
nodder dough, shaping tiny nutlike Danish cookies heavily spiced with
cinnamon, Marty came to me and said in a tone mixed with pleasure and
pride, “Mom, I’ve bought Kenny a Christmas present. Want to see it?"
So that’s what he’s been up to, I said to myself. “It’s something he’s
wanted for a long, long time, mom.”
After carefully wiping his hands on a dishtowel, he pulled from his pocket
a small box. Lifting the lid, I gazed at the pocket compass to point an
eight-year-old adventurer through the woods.
“It’s a lovely gift, Martin, “ I said, but even as I spoke, a disturbing
thought came to mind. I knew how Kenny’s mother felt about their poverty.
They could barely afford to exchange gifts among themselves, and to give
presents to others was out of the question. I was sure that Kenny’s proud
mother would not permit her son to receive something he could not return
in kind.
Gently, and carefully I talked over the problem with
Marty. He understood what I was saying.
“I know, mom, I know…but what if it was a secret? What if they never found
out who gave it?”
I didn’t know how to answer him.
The day before Christmas was rainy and cold and gray. The three kids and
I all but fell over one another as we elbowed our way about our little
home putting finishing touches on Christmas secrets and preparing for
family and friends who would be dropping by.
Night settled in. The rain continued. I looked out the window over the
sink and felt an odd sadness. How mundane the rain seemed for a Christmas
Eve. Would wise and royal men come riding on such a night? I doubted it.
It seemed to me that strange and wonderful things happened only on clear
nights, nights when one could at least see a star in the heavens .
I turned from the window, and as I checked on the lefse bread warming
in the oven, I saw Marty slip out the door. He wore his coat over his
pajamas, and he clutched a tiny, colorfully wrapped bow in his pocket.
Down through the soggy pasture he went, then a quick slide under the electric
fence and across the yard to Kenny’s house. Up the steps on tiptoes, shoes
squishing; open the screen door just a crack; the gift placed on the doorstep;
then a deep breath, a reach for the doorbell and a press on it—hard.
Quickly Marty turned, ran down the steps and across
the yard in a wild race to get away unnoticed. Then, suddenly, he banged
into the electric fence.
The shock sent him reeling. He lay stunned on the wet ground. His body
tingled and he gasped for breath. Then slowly, weakly, confused and frightened,
he began the grueling trip back home.
“Marty, “ we cried as he stumbled through the door, “what happened?” His
lower lip quivered, his eyes brimmed. “ I forgot about the fence, and
it knocked me down!”
I hugged his muddy little body to me. He was stilled dazed, and there
was a red mark beginning to blister on his face from his mouth to his
ear. Quickly I treated the blister and, with a warm cup of cocoa soothing
him, Marty’s bright spirits returned. I tucked him into bed and just before
he fell asleep he looked at me and said, “Mom, Kenny didn’t see me. I’m
sure he didn’t see me.”
That Christmas Eve I went to bed unhappy and puzzled. It seemed such a
cruel thing to happen to a little boy while on the purest kind of Christmas
mission, doing what the Lord wants us all to do, giving to others, and
giving in secret at that. I did not sleep well that night. Somewhere deep
inside I think I must have been feeling the disappointment that the night
of Christmas had come and it had been just an ordinary, problem-filled
night, no mysterious enchantment at all.
But I was wrong.
By morning the rain had stopped and the sun shone. The streak on Marty’s
face was very red, but I could tell that the burn was not serious. We
opened our presents, and soon, not unexpectedly, Kenny was knocking on
the door, eager to show Marty his new compass and tell
about the mystery of its arrival. It was plain that
Kenny didn’t suspect Marty at all, and while the two of them talked Marty
just smiled and smiled.
Then I noticed that while the two boys were comparing their Christmases,
nodding and gesturing and chattering away, Marty was not cocking his head.
When Kenny was talking, Marty seemed to be listening with his deaf ear.
Weeks later a report came from the school nurse, verifying what Marty
and I already knew: “ Marty now has complete hearing in both ears.”
The mystery of how Marty regained his hearing, and
still has it, remains just that – a mystery. Doctors suspect, of course,
that the shock from the electric fence was somehow responsible. Perhaps
so. Whatever the reason, I just remain thankful to God for the good exchange
of gifts that was made that night.
So you see, strange and wonderful things still happen
on the night of our Lord’s birth. And one does not have to have a clear
night, either, to follow a fabulous star.
4. “O Holy Night”, Mannheim Steamroller, from A Fresh
Aire Christmas.
|
