24 Days of Christmas Day 7

7 December 

Jehovah

 D&C 110:2–3  2 We saw the Lord standing upon the breastwork of the pulpit, before us; and under his feet was a paved work of pure gold, in color like amber.

 3 His eyes were as a flame of fire; the hair of his head was white like the pure snow; his countenance shone above the brightness of the sun; and his voice was as the sound of the rushing of great waters, even the voice of Jehovah, saying:

Carol:  Samuel Tells of the Baby Jesus Children’s Songbook #36

Story:  Straw for the Manger

Straw for the Manger   

 

KATHRYN E. FRANKS

    

The boys and girls in Miss Bell's class at Belmont School gathered in the school auditorium to prepare for the yearly Christmas program.    

Pete, the tallest boy in the class, was up on the stage nailing wood together for the manger scene.

Sara, a pretty girl with long hair, and Molly, with short hair and dimples, had been fitted for the angel costumes. Now they were busy pinning the flimsy white material together for their mothers to stitch.

The other children were lined up in the back of the room waiting to be called into the music room for chorus practice.    

Lisa hadn't been assigned anything yet. She stood alone, among the empty seats. If I weren't so tall, she mused, or if I had long, blond hair, I'd like to do something besides stay backstage and pin on costumes, or stand in the doorway and welcome parents.    

She was new in the class, and living on the outskirts of town in a trailer with her grandmother and father. It was only natural, she felt, that she wasn't very well acquainted.    

Standing alone among the rows of empty seats, Lisa waited anxiously for Miss Bell to come back into the room. She tried to busy her hands, although there was nothing really for her to do. She had started stacking some songbooks when Pete, upstage with the manger scene, called out, "We haven't any straw. How can we make a manger scene without straw?"    

Some were busy talking and did not hear. Others looked up with little concern, then turned back to their work.    

Pete stepped to the front of the stage and called louder this time. "Hey, all of you! If any of you have any straw, I'll pick it up after I finish my paper route."    

Why didn't someone speak up? Lisa wondered. Sara lived in a big house on the edge of town. She owned her own riding horse. She would have straw.    

"Well‑?" Pete waited impatiently for an answer.    

We have straw under the trailer, Lisa's conscience reminded her. How could she offer, though, if the other girls hadn't. She shuddered at the thought of being conspicuous, but she could not take her eyes from the unfinished manger scene.    

"I have straw, Pete," she said, "if you'll come get it."    

The girls looked quickly at Lisa, then turned back to their work.    

"Good," Pete answered. "I know where you live. It will probably be dark before I get there."    

The room was embarrassingly quiet. Lisa picked up her books and hurried out the rear door without waiting for Miss Bell to come from the music room and excuse her for the day.    

A cold wind blew from the north as Lisa hugged her thin coat around her and hurried across town. She walked along the outskirts until she reached the trailer park. The trailers were back a distance from the road, protected in front by a grove of trees.    

After Lisa explained to her grandmother what she planned to do, she went outside to look under the trailer. She ran back. "The straw is greasy and oily! What shall I do?"    

She looked out the window at the field that stretched southward to the Norris farm.    

"I'll have to cross the fields to the Norris farm," she told her grandmother. "Mrs. Norris will give me some fresh straw."   Grandmother was old, but she understood that things are important if they are promised. "Go," she said, "but be back before supper time‑before it gets dark."    

Lisa climbed under the barbed wire fence and ran down the slope to the gully. There she pushed through thistle and tall grasses and then scurried upward to the second fence. In the distance the bare trees of the Norris orchard looked small and far away. It hadn't seemed this far before, Lisa thought, as she panted up the last hill to the orchard. The rough, wooded gate opened into the orchard. Here Lisa followed a narrow path to the backyard.    

Mrs. Norris welcomed Lisa and asked her about her grandmother. "As soon as I put this bread in the oven, we'll go to the barn and fill a clean gunnysack with straw." The good smell of fresh bread made Lisa hungry.    

Daylight had started to fade by the time Lisa stepped out the door. Snow clouds slid over the first evening star.    

At the second fence Lisa decided that if she cut across the cornfield, she would cut the distance to the trailer in half.    

In the half‑darkness she stumbled over the corn stubble with every few steps. As she hurried through the thickets, she tripped and fell, hitting her chin against a sharp stone. Half crawling, she pulled the sack until she regained her balance.    

Lisa sobbed out as the sharp weeds tore her stocking and cut her hands. The taller cornstalks snagged at her coat, slowing her down as she tried to run.    

Then as she reached the slope that stretched uphill to the last barbed wire fence, she spotted the tiny light from the trailer window. Like a distant star, it guided her forward.    

Lisa barely had time to change her clothes before Pete came for the straw. "Thanks, Lisa," he said. She told him nothing of her trip to the nearby farm.    

"Would you have time to arrange the straw around the manger for me tomorrow after school?" Pete asked. "I have a longer paper route now. I never get in before supper time."    

"I'll do it‑I'll be glad to."    

After school the next day, Lisa, with her dark sweater around her shoulders, tip‑toed quietly on the stage in the auditorium.    

She was on her knees carefully spreading the straw when Miss Bell came into the auditorium. As she came through the door, she paused, stopped, then slowly she took a few steps forward. "Lisa!" she called excitedly, "you are just right! You are the person I want to play Mary." She walked toward the stage. "I asked Mrs. Laurel, our music teacher, to select a taller girl for the part. She misunderstood, and I just now found out that we have no one for the part."    

Miss Bell stepped upon the stage. She took the sweater from Lisa's shoulders, and placed it, like a shawl, around her face. "Your features are just right. You will be wonderful."    

Slowly Lisa lifted her face, her eyes wide in wonderment.    

"Miss Bell," she answered softly, her fingers moving the wisps of straw, "I would love to‑more than any other part."    

Miss Bell did not see the tears that fell and lost themselves in the straw.    

Miss Bell told Lisa, "You will kneel beside the manger with the colored lights soft upon you. Pete, who is playing Joseph, will stand beside you. Keep your fingers lightly on the manger while the choir and the angels sing in the background. You will keep motionless while the shepherds gather slowly around the crib."    

Miss Bell hurried out of the room after giving Lisa instructions to be ready for rehearsal the next day. A joyful little song burst through Lisa's happiness and followed her across town to the trailer, where she rushed inside to tell Grandmother her wonderful news.     

Children's Friend, December 1965. 

24 Days of Christmas Day 4

4 December

Anointed One  

Bible Dictionary—Anointed One

Carol: Joy to the World Hymn #201

Story: A Boy Learns a Lesson

A Boy Learns a Lesson

In about my tenth year, as Christmas approached, I longed for and electric train. The times were those of the economic depression, yet my mother and dad purchased for me a lovely electric train.

Christmas morning bright and early I thrilled when I noticed my train. The next few hours were devoted to operating the transformer and watching the engine pull its cars forward - then backward around the track.

Mother said that she had purchased a windup train for the widow Hansen's boy, Mark, who lived down the lane at Gale street. As I looked at his train, I noted a tanker car which  I so much admired. I put up such a fuss that my mother succumbed to my pleadings and gave me the tanker car. I put it with the train set and felt pleased.

My mother and I took the remaining cars and the engine down to Mark Hansen. The young boy was a year or two older that I . He had never anticipated such a gift. He was thrilled beyond words. He wound the key in his engine, it not being electric or as expensive as mine, and was overjoyed as the engine and the three cars, plus caboose went around the track.

I felt a horrible sense of guilt as I returned home. The tanker car no longer appealed to me. Suddenly, I took the tanker car in my hand, plus an additional car of my own, and ran all the way down to Gale Street and proudly announced to Mark, "we forgot to bring two cars which belong to your train."

I don't know when a deed has made me feel any better than that experience as a ten-year-old boy.

 - Thomas S. Monson

24 Day of Christmas day 3

3 December 

Good Shepherd

 John 10:14–15, 17  14 I am the good shepherd, and know my sheep, and am known of mine.

 15 As the Father knoweth me, even so know I the Father: and I lay down my life for the sheep.

 17 Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life, that I might take it again.

Carol: O Little town of Bethlehem Hymn #208

Story: I was Grateful Just to be Alive

I was Grateful Just to be Alive

Royal R.Meservy

It was the Sunday before Christmas, and our family was discussing memorable Christmases. After some discussions among the children, my eleven-year-old son Greg asked, "Dad, which Christmas do you remember best? Will you tell us about it?"

That was a big order, but after a few minutes' hesitation, I proceeded to tell them this experience:

The Christmas that stands out most in my mind was that of 1944, during World War II. We had fought through the Battle of the Ardennes and were then sent to the Siegfried Line to replace the Second Division. We had been there a week when the German offensive known as the Belgian Bulge began. We were right on the nose of that thrust and were commanded to hold at all costs. For two and a half days we fought and held. But finally, on December 19, 1944, we were forced to surrender.

After we were searched, we stood out in a barnyard all night. The next morning we began a march of thirty-eight miles. There was no food, except part of a raw sugar beet that I dashed into a field to get as we marched along.

The following morning, after sleeping on the cold, damp ground, we moved slowly forward. We arrived at a big building about noon and were given two packages of German emergency ration crackers and a ride to the Geroldstein, Germany, railway station, where we slept on the hard cement. On December 21, we were loaded aboard a train of boxcars, with sixty-five men to each car. The sliding doors on either side of the car were wired shut from the outside. There was no food or water.

December 23, 1944, found us outside of Diez, still cramped up in the boxcar, hungry and thirsty. It was on this memorable afternoon that I learned the true meaning of Christmas.

Just before dark American bombers flew overhead, and bombs fell so close that one boxcar door was ripped entirely off. As the bombing continued, someone asked, "Has anybody got a Bible?" I reached into my pocket and handed him my pocket edi­tion of the New Testament. He turned to the second chapter of Saint Luke and read:

"And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

"And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them: and they were sore afraid.

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

"For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.

"And this shall be a sign unto you; Ye shall find the babe wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger.

"And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying,

"Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men." (Luke 2:8-14.)

I had heard that scripture read year after year, but never be­fore or since with the emotion and feeling with which it was read in that boxcar.

Peace came over us. He handed the Bible back to me, and we all sat quietly, each deep in his own thoughts.

The next day, after eighty-eight hours without water, we were given water and later some food. Christmas of 1944 is the one I remember best because I was grateful just to be alive.

Improvement Era. December 1970, p. 6. Dr. Royal R. Meservy, a native of Wilford Fremont County, Idaho, has served two full-time missions for the Church. He and his wife have seven children; the family resides in Fullerton, California, where he is a counselor at Fullerton College.