TH E K I N G ’ S B U S I N E S S
444
O come All ye faithful
Joyful and Triumphant
By MEREDITH CARR
Father, and somehow I saw more clearly than ever before What was in volved When our Lord left His glory in heaven to come to earth to be bom as a tiny babe. I tell you, Marge, it is wonderful to have Him as your Com- mander-in-Chief. Immanuel, God with us! And ‘God with us’ makes all the difference in the world. The presence of Christ is something very practical out here. It answers all our questions. . . . Pray fdr me that I may be a faith ful witness to those here who do not know Him . . . ” Marjorie had only dimly realized what Don had tried to tell her. She was glad for him that he had heard that Christmas song, but her prayers were- for his safety. Now the slow, majestic notes of the same song Don had heard last year were filling the room and were tight ening the hard band that seemed to encase her heart. “O come, all ye faithful, joyful and triumphant; O come ye, O come ye to Bethle- > hem.” How coqld she be joyful and tri umphant? There was no justice. Life wasn’t fair—God wasn’t fair. He had taken Don, youhg and splendid, with years of his life in which to serve the Lord, and He had left a half-wit like Ted Murton who lived near them, to be a burden to himself and his fam ily. . , ’ She had fought hard against this bitterness, the hard coldness that numbed her. At first, she had read her Bible eagerly, almost frantically, for some hope or pattern for her life. She had tried to pray and, finally, she had written to a prominent minister to ask
dignity in his death. Don had died in a Japanese prison. And she had lain for long hours of each night since the word had come, torturing herself with the thought of his suffering. Had he been mistreated? Was he starved to death? Had he been ill, with no one to care for him? She had read news paper accounts of the horrors of the enemy prisons: the privations and the indignities endured. And she would see Don, his bright head bowed in suf fering, his clear blue eyes dulled with pain, and would feel she could not go on. Suddenly the music changed and Marjorie stiffened, her clenched fist going to her mbuth to stifle a gasp. That song—it was his song. That was the song that had meant Christmas to Don last year. His letter, telling her of it, had not reached her until many weeks after Christmas but, reading it, she had felt that she was in the plane with the crew, returning from a raid over Bur ma a few days before Christmas, and was experiencing the wonder of the radio as for the first time. They/had reached friendly territory, Don said, where some of the watchfulness could be relaxed; the radio operator was ordered to tune in—and he had picked up a Pacific Coast station. Across the miles of ocean and warring land, the miracle of a Christmas carol had pene trated through the static of the ear phones—an American choir singing, “O Come, All Ye Faithful.” “I c&n’t tell you what it meant to me and the fellows,” Don had written. J3he could quote most of his letters from memory since she had known there would be no more. “ Itt was a precious Christmas gift from our
=*• CAN’T stand it. I won’t stand it,” I Marjorie Evans whispered bitterly to herself against the muted mu sic that formed the prelude of the Christmas service, She had sat, still and tense, enduring the familiar car ols that filled the church auditorium with their beauty and the richness of the organ tones. But the notes had beat through her head with hammer like blows. She half rose to leave, but sank quickly back at a slight movement from her mother. She had come to church this Christmas morning be cause, had she not done so, she would have hurt' her mother immeasurably. Since she was here, she must stay. The smile she gave her mother was forced, but she hoped it looked natural and would allay the unguarded concern she had seen in her eyes. Mother was so dear—she was all that Marjorie had to cling to now—and she mustn’t know, ever, about the hardness that had taken the place of love in her daughter’s heart. The letter had started it. “We regret fully have to inform you that your husband . . .” And she had known that Don was never coming home again. There had been some hope through all those months he had been “missing in action”—even when his name was listed as a prisoner of war, and she knew he must endure the misery of a Japanese prison. Hope was gone now. She had noth ing—not even the memory of swift death for him, to soften the fact that he was not coming back. If he could have gone fighting to the end—4iis plane plunging to earth in one terri ble roar—she could have borne it bet ter, she felt. But there had been no
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