Fiction

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It was a Sunday night and I opted to miss evening worship service. After all I was very tired and so, I went to bed quite early. For some reason, I was restless and unsettled in my spirit. I drifted into an even more unsettling dream that brought me to the church building.

Christmas was over and some of the ladies had gathered at the church to clean up and put away the colorful trappings of the Season. Taking down banners and disposing of dying poinsettias always made the sanctuary look drab and colorless after experiencing the beautiful color of Christmas. But the carols were hushed, the children’s choir had sung, the adults had presented their cantata, the fellowshipping and exchanging of gifts was over; it was time to move on into a new year…maybe a new era.

As we cleaned, sweeping up the old hay around the nativity scene, we came upon the crèche. There was never a proper storage place for the cradle and it always wound up in the corner of the storage room. It became a receptacle for old bulletins, offering envelopes, silk flowers and an abundance of things that never found their way to proper storage or the garbage can. One of the ladies reached into the cradle to pick up the doll that was left there and exclaimed, quite alarmed, “Oh, my God! It is alive”.

Of course none of us believed her, but to our dismay, she was correct. The tiny baby in the manger was alive. As ladies are apt to do, we all took turns examining the child, loving it an cradling it to our breasts. As we overcame the disbelief, we realized we had a decision to make, What were we to do with the infant? Surely we could not let it be known outside the wall of this sanctuary that we have found a baby in the manger. Who would believe us? Why people might think we had done something unseemly. We surely could not take him home. The child would probably end up as a ward of the state. We decided to keep the baby safe in the storage room and we would take care of him everyday.

This became our mission. One of the ladies would go each day to nurture the baby bringing bottles of fresh milk, changes of clothes and diapers. We fed him, rocked him, sang songs to him, loved him, He was ours alone. We were not aware that something was sadly missing from this baby’s life. He was isolated and kept in a dark place. The sunshine only filtered in through the frosted glass during the daylight hours. His cries fell on emptiness except for the few hours each day we spent with him. We noticed the baby began to get weaker and grow very pale. His cries were very soft and almost inaudible. Still we tried to nurture him and bring him up in a “safe” environment where he would not be noticed by the outside world and we would not be questioned.

One day we arrived as a group to find the baby dead. Now what? We could not dig a grave in the cemetery to bury him. That would surely be noticed and questioned. We began our journey to conceal the existence of the baby and we would have to continue to do so. We sealed the little body in a box and kept it in the storage room. However, it was not long before the congregation began to notice a stench throughout the building. We tried covering the odor with room fresheners, fresh flowers and burning candles. Nothing worked, Not even the music of the praise band could take the minds of the worshippers off the dreadful stench. The Word of God began to fall on deaf ears of fewer and fewer people. The praises of the congregation were empty. But no one noticed there was a death in the church.

What was wrong? We had always enjoyed the worship and fellowship inside the four walls of this building. Something was missing and no one knew what it was. New people quit coming. People began to drift away. The music died. The praises were stilled. Finally, the stench was gone as well. The building went into disrepair. As I took my final exit from the doors I saw that the cross that had stood so long over the steeple had broken and fallen to the ground. And someone, we never knew who, had put a sign over the door that read “Ichabod”…now what does that mean?

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