Treasures of the Snow (14 page)

It was his own birthday, too, and this year he was six. He had thought for a long time about being six, and he expected to wake up quite a new child on the morning of Christmas Eve. So it was rather disappointing to find, as he lay in the warm, shuttered darkness, that he really felt no bigger or stronger or more important than before. Then he remembered that he was going to see the Christmas tree in the church, and Grandmother had made a special cake for his birthday, and after that there was no room for disappointed thoughts any longer.

Of course, according to Dani, Christmas was Klaus’s birthday, too. It wasn’t really Klaus’s birthday because Klaus must have been at least a fortnight old when she crept into Dani’s slipper, but Dani had never thought of that.

Best of all, it was the birthday of the Lord Jesus, and although Dani did not talk about it very much, he thought about it a lot. It made him strangely happy to know that he shared the birthday of the perfect child.

“What could I give to the little Lord Jesus for a birthday present?” he had asked, resting his elbows on Grandmother’s knee and looking up into her face.

“You can give your own self to Him,” Grandmother had answered, pausing a moment in her knitting. “And you can ask Him to make you very loving and obedient. That will please Him better than anything.”

So throughout Christmas, Dani tried to be loving and obedient in order to please the child whose birthday he shared, and his love just overflowed to everyone. He tidied Grandmother’s workbox and wiped the dishes for Annette. In the afternoon he went out to the shed and visited the cows in turn, wishing Happy Christmas into their silky ears. And at the end of the day, when he said his prayers, he whispered, “I hope I am giving you a happy birthday, little Lord Jesus.”

So Dani had a perfect birthday, and when evening came and it was time to wrap up warmly and go down to the church, his happiness was complete.

To begin with, there was the ride on the sled between Papa and Annette, with the cold air making his nose feel as though it wasn’t there. It was almost full moon, and the white mountains looked quite silvery. All the trees in the forest were weighed down with snow, and the lower branches trembled as they rushed past. Annette held him tightly around the middle, which made him feel very warm and safe.

Out of the wood, over the bumpy little bridge and down across the last field with a cold rush, there was the little church with the rosy light of hundreds of candles streaming from the windows and door, and the villagers greeting each other in the porch. Dani was carried up the aisle in Papa’s arms and placed on the front bench with the other children from the infant school—thirty little rosy-faced children in woolly hoods gazing in wonder at the tree. Only three days ago it had been weighed down with snow in the cold forest near Dani’s house. Now it was decorated and sparkling, covered with oranges, chocolate sticks, and shining gingerbread bears.

Dani was glad he was sitting in front, partly because he could see the tree, and partly because he could see his picture. It hung behind the pulpit—a great big picture of the Good Samaritan. It was hung in a wooden frame and had been drawn by a famous Swiss artist. Dani loved the kind face of the Good Samaritan, and he loved the little donkey. But best of all he loved the big St. Bernard dog that trotted along beside them. It was exactly like Rudolf, the St. Bernard dog that pulled the milk cart around the market square. He actually belonged to the milkman, but all the little children in the village thought he belonged to them. They climbed on his back and flung their fat, tight arms around his fluffy neck, and he licked them and patted them and was so patient with them, as though they were a crowd of naughty puppies. That was why every toddler in the church loved to come to church and see the picture of the Good Samaritan, with Rudolph trotting beside him.

The older children sang a carol first. Annette was singing it with the others, and her thoughts flew back to that Christmas night when she had first held Dani in her arms. How they had welcomed him and watched him. Yet no one but His mother had welcomed Baby Jesus. “They laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”

The carol finished, the older children went back to their seats and the infant school trotted to the front. Dani got left behind because crutches do not move as fast as sturdy legs, but they waited for him, and everyone in the audience smiled as he reached his place with a final hop and turned his happy face toward them.

Dani glanced up at the bright star on top of the Christmas tree and saw it reflected on the shining gingerbread bears below, and forgot what he was singing because he was wondering which particular bear was going to belong to him. There was one that looked as if it was laughing. The baker had accidentally given a little twist to its snout. Dani decided he would like that one.

As the children went back to their seats, the old pastor climbed into the pulpit. He had been pastor in that village for forty-five years and everybody loved him. His shoulders were bowed and his skin tanned, for he still climbed the mountain in all weather to visit his church members. His beard was so long and white that Dani got him mixed up in his mind with Father Christmas.

He looked down on the people he loved and knew so well. He was a very old man. This might be his last Christmas message. He prayed that he might speak words that would not be forgotten.

Annette listened rather dreamily to the story she knew so well, half thinking of other things, until the old man suddenly repeated the words that had haunted her every Christmas.

“There was no room for them—no room for
Him
!”

In the slow manner of some very old people, he repeated it three times, and each time Annette thought the words sounded sadder. How quickly she would have opened her door!

“And yet,” went on the old man, “tonight the Savior is standing at closed doors. There are still hearts that have never made room for Him. This is what He says: ‘Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in.’

“What will you do about Him this Christmas? Will you open the door, or will you leave Him standing outside? Will those sad words be said about you, ‘There was no room for Him’?”

“I should like to ask Him to come in,” thought Annette. “I wonder what it all means. The clergyman spoke about asking Him to come into our hearts. I wonder if I could ask Him into
my
heart.”

Just for a moment Annette thought it rather a nice idea, and looked around to see whether other people thought it was, too. As she looked around, she suddenly noticed Lucien sitting on the other side of the church with his mother and sister.

As she caught sight of him she realized that she couldn’t ask Jesus to come into her heart because her heart was full of hatred for Lucien. Jesus would not want to come into an angry, unforgiving heart. Either she would have to forgive and be kind, or else the Lord Jesus would have to stay outside.

She didn’t want to forgive and be kind. Not yet. There was something else, too. She had broken Lucien’s carving and let him think it was the cat, and cheated him of his prize. If the Lord Jesus came into her heart, He would have something to say to her about that, and she didn’t want to listen.

The sermon was over, but she had not heard much of it because she had been so busy with her thoughts. Dani nudged her to make her see that it was time for him to go up and get his gingerbread bear.

The church was full of a low murmur of conversation, and the little ones were pushing forward toward the tree. Monsieur Pilet, the woodcutter, was handing out bears. Dani gave his sleeve a firm tug and pointed to the bear at the top, which he wanted.

“Please, I want that one,” he whispered, “that one up there. Please, I want it very badly!”

Because of the crutches, and because it was Christmas, Monsieur Pilet moved the ladders, moved the children, and moved the lower lights, and with great difficulty he climbed up and took hold of the bear that Dani wanted.

Dani was dragged home through the starlight and the snow with the bear he had specially chosen close to him. Every time he looked down at that merry curved snout he chuckled, as though he and his bear had some private Christmas joke between them that nobody else knew about.

C
hristmas Day was over, and Dani was asleep with his flushed cheek lying on his arm. Papa was in the stable, and Annette and Grandmother sat one each side of the stove. Grandmother was knitting white woollen stockings for her grandchildren, and Annette was supposed to be patching her pinafore. Actually, her pinafore had slipped to the ground and she was simply staring in front of her with her head resting on her hands.

“Annette,” said Grandmother suddenly, without looking up from her knitting, “have you had a happy Christmas?”

“Yes, thank you, Grandmother,” replied Annette rather dully, because that’s what she thought she ought to say. Then she added suddenly, “Grandmother, what does it mean when it says that Jesus knocks at the door of our hearts?”

“It means,” said Grandmother, laying down her knitting and giving Annette her whole attention, “that Jesus sees that your life is full of wrong things and dark thoughts. He came down and died on the cross so that He could be punished for all those wrong deeds and dark thoughts instead of you. Then He came back to life again so that He could come into your life and live in you, and turn out all those wrong thoughts, and put His good loving thoughts in you instead. It’s like someone knocking at the door of a dirty, dark, dusty house and saying, ‘If you will let me in I will take away the dust and the darkness and make it beautiful and bright.’ But remember, Jesus never
pushes
His way in—He only asks if He may come in. That is what knocking means. You have to say, ‘Yes, Lord Jesus, I need you and I want you to come and live in me.’ That’s what opening the door means.”

Annette’s eyes were fixed on Grandmother. There was a long, long pause.

Annette broke the silence.

“But Grandmother,” she said, drawing her stool nearer and leaning against the old woman’s knee, “if you hated someone, you could not ask Jesus to come in, could you?”

“If you hate someone,” said Grandmother, “it just shows how badly you need to ask Him to come in. The darker the room, the more it needs the light.”

“But I couldn’t stop hating Lucien,” said Annette softly, fingering her long plaits thoughtfully.

“No,” said Grandmother. “You’re quite right. None of us can stop ourselves thinking wrong thoughts, and it isn’t much good trying. But Annette, when you come down in the morning and find this room dark with the shutters closed, do you say to yourself, ‘I must chase away the darkness and the shadows first, and
then
I will open the shutters and let in the sun’? Do you waste time trying to get rid of the dark?”

“Of course not,” said Annette.

“Then how do you get rid of the dark?”

“I pull back the shutters, of course, and then the light comes in!”

“But what happens to the dark?”

“I don’t know. It just goes when the light comes!”

“That is just what happens when you ask the Lord Jesus to come in,” said Grandmother. “He is love, and when love comes in, hatred and selfishness and unkindness will give way to it, just as the darkness gives way when you let in the sunshine. To try to chase it out alone would be like trying to chase the shadows out of a dark room. It would be a waste of time.”

Annette did not answer. She only sat for a little time staring at the wall. Then she picked up her pinafore with a sigh and worked at it in silence. After a while she got up, kissed her grandmother good night very quietly, and went up to bed.

But she could not go to sleep for a long time. She lay in the dark, tossing and turning and wondering.

“It’s quite true,” she said to herself. “If I asked Him to come in, I should have to be friends with Lucien, and I don’t want to be. I suppose I should have to tell how I broke his carving, and I could never,
never
do that. I shall just have to try and forget about the knocking. And yet I feel so terribly miserable.”

She did not know yet that the child who hears the Lord Jesus knocking, and shuts Him out, is also shutting out happiness. She thought she could forget all about it and find some other way of being happy. So she turned over her pillow, and made herself count the goats running to pasture until she fell asleep.

In her sleep she dreamed of a dark house with no welcome lights in the windows, and the door barred and bolted. Somebody came to it at night across the waste of snow, and she could see his footprints all the way. This visitor knocked at the door, slowly and patiently, but nobody came to open it. He felt for a handle, but there wasn’t one. He went on knocking and knocking and knocking. He went on knocking until Annette woke up, but still nobody answered, and there were still no lights in the windows.

“Perhaps there’s nobody there,” thought Annette to herself in a half-asleep sort of way. But somehow she knew perfectly well that there was. They just didn’t want to come to the door.