A Stark Fear

The coming of Christmas is to be under the spell of evocative memories. Once on Christmas Eve our family was returning from the candle lighting service at the church. We pulled our car into the carport and the children, filled with the excitement of the evening, spilled toward the back door, each trying to be the first into the house. Instead of following them, I took a detour to the front door where sleigh bells were a part of the decoration. I opened the door, seized the bells and gave a couple of quick jerks. Our three year old daughter was terrified that we obviously had disturbed Santa in his visit to our home. She ran back outside in tears, calling to her mother. She had been counting the days until Christmas. But the prospect of coming face to face with Santa was overwhelming.

And how well I recall the year 1957 for a number of reasons. But there was one event that is as vivid as yesterday to me. I remember lying across the bed, reading a seminary textbook in our apartment on the campus of Emory University. The radio was playing softly in the background. There was an interruption in the music and my reading by the news of the sounds of Sputnik I, the first orbiting Russian satellite as it passed over our country. I well recall its eerie "beep-beep" of its radio transmitters, proving beyond any shadow of a doubt its existence and its trajectory. The hair stood on the back of my neck. I laid my book aside. I felt afraid. My whole purpose in life somehow seemed dwarfed by this new knowledge. I knew that life would never again be the same.

It was stark fear that grasped the hearts of the shepherds. They had most likely been among those hoping and waiting for the coming of a Messianic figure to redeem their lives. Yet when "the landscape shone bright with the glory of the Lord, they were badly frightened." What they probably thought to be the end of the world was really how dawn comes in God's world.

-- George Randle