The Last Christmas Prayer

Opal Anne didn’t walk; she creaked.

She creaked across the parking lot and she creaked up the church stairs. She didn’t mind creaking. She was just glad she could still move after 92 years.

She had sat in the third pew at Church Street Fellowship for more years than she cared to count, and she had seen it all.

As she creaked to her place in front this Sunday, six weeks before Christmas, she smiled with satisfaction at the faces she passed and the lives she knew.

In the back pew sat Orville Plunk. Orville had a heart of gold, but rarely said a word. He’d arrive late, sit in the back and leave before the pastor finished. He skedaddled long before the last song and certainly before anyone could snag him and ask how he was doing, and only Opal really knew that he was doing fine except for his back.

Orville lived a quiet bachelor’s life. He worked at the stock yards and worked at a job few others would want to do, but he worked for the Lord and not man and put his heart into every shovelful of effort. His employer loved Orville and watched him work, sweat and smile over the years.

No one at church but Opal knew that one day Orville’s employer -- a crusty, old cuss of a man -- had asked Orville why he seemed to enjoy such a dirty, difficult job. Opal also knew that Orville had opened up and told a story that awed his boss. Orville gave him the gospel, in his own quiet way, and the man had listened.

No dramatic change happened at that point. But five years later, the employer’s wife died. The man, after a hard night’s drinking, had called Orville up. The two sat down and had a long, serious talk about life and death and what’s important and what’s not.

Even Opal didn’t know that the employer had peeled off layers of crust, began taking an interest in his kids and begun to go to church. Not Church Street Fellowship, but the church he’d grown up in. He stopped gambling and instead began to give to his late wife’s favorite charity. He slowly turned and softened in ways that Orville knew were signs that the Lord had made a home in him.
No one in church would have suspected that Orville had much at all to do with the gospel or its effects on the community. He was just the guy that came late and left fast.

On her slow way up to the front, Opal passed Thelma Little. Thelma was an organizer and made sure the church was well-oiled. Thelma was bold, and some would say a little brassy, but Thelma made sure that the gears of the church interlocked smoothly. If someone couldn’t fulfill a duty, Thelma would make sure someone else was there instead. Many times, she’d stand in herself. If the church ran out of paper plates, Thelma would provide them.

Thelma would not allow anyone to fade into the background. If someone didn’t show up three weeks in a row, Thelma would bring soup, even if the person wasn’t sick. Opal knew that Thelma had a good heart and was not just a busybody. Thelma liked efficiency and perfection, but she would step in herself to make things run smoothly whenever there was a need. She drove a lot of people crazy, but she did it with a warm heart.

Even Opal didn’t know that Thelma contributed to missions work substantially. For that matter, Thelma’s left hand didn’t know it. Thelma had a heart for those who risked all to bring the gospel to far flung places.

Opal creaked past the Firth family. Jon Firth was a ready volunteer whenever a church workday came, and was good at small, fixer upper jobs. He frequently “puttered” and quietly repaired broken parts of the church. His wife was good at the books and helped with church accounts. Their kids were polite and often brought friends to church.

Opal stopped for a minute to rest before heading up to her third pew. She stopped next to Juliet George, the main coordinator for children’s ministry. Juliet was never sitting for long, so Opal just smiled, gave a quick hug and continued on.

Juliet had no idea the impact of her ministry. She didn’t know of the child who grew up and became a nurse instead of a pole dancer or the one who refused to shoplift with her friends or the one who gave his life on a battlefield to lay down his life for a friend. Juliet did not know there was any fruit from the hundreds of Bible stories she had told, or that her teachers had told.

She did not know whether any of those stories anchored themselves in the hearts of kids. She just knew it was hard work and sometimes thankless work and, on rare occasions, even work she would rather not be doing. Juliet simply loved God and loved kids and wanted to join the two together as often as possible.

Opal rested a moment and then continued up the aisle.
She passed a deacon, Tim Savage, and knew that despite Tim’s persistent frown, he loved Jesus and would often help out the poor of the church, even beyond what was allotted in the benevolent fund. Though people thought he was rich, his pockets were frequently empty and empty on purpose.

Opal waved at Vince Botti who was standing by the side entrance. Vince was the potluck king and loved to cook. He’d volunteer for picnic duty every time. Vince was also good at small talk. He could, and would, talk to anyone, and though he had never felt comfortable laying out something like the Four Spiritual Laws in front of someone, he made many visitors feel comfortable and was largely responsible for new families fitting in and feeling at home at Church Street Fellowship.

Some of them would later invite friends. Some of those friends invited unbelieving relatives, and they found the good news of Jesus for the first time – all because Vince had chatted with them each week and set their minds at ease. No one in church would ever have called Vince a spiritual giant – except Opal.

Closer to the front of the church, Opal paused to talk to three of her friends: Mary, Jenna and Tom.

Mary Kerry was the women’s Bible study leader and loved the Word. Her passion for the scriptures overflowed, and she always had a scripture ready for any circumstance. Her cheerful outlook kept her from falling into a severe role, and Opal always enjoyed conversing with her.

Jenna Crocker was the social chairperson, and she enjoyed cracking jokes. No one took Jenna seriously except Opal. Opal knew that behind the jolly exterior was a woman who had seen a lot of pain.

Jenna had lost three babies in miscarriage. She had known a painful divorce. Her brother had died of a drug overdose and her mother struggled with alcoholism.

Through all of these hardships, Jenna had wrestled with God and had come out polished and glimmering. Nothing could shake her faith.

At work, she left many co-workers in awe and managed to joke her way into their hearts. When something hard was happening in their lives, they knew Jenna had answers and sought her out.

Tom Sarley was the men’s Bible study leader. He loved teaching and enjoyed seeing men come to a deeper understanding of the scripture. Opal found him good company and they often discussed issues of the day together.

When Opal finally creaked her way into the third pew, she felt at home. Next to her on the right were Louise and Roy Breckenridge, youth workers whose warm ways and open outlook helped a lot of kids see value in walking with God.

Kids who would have fallen into vapid party lifestyles saw instead a better way. Others who would have been “good church kids” became more than that and felt called to deeper commitments. The Breckenridges’ easy style and sincerity opened a way for many young lives to flow into a living, thriving river of joy.

Opal shook hands with the pastor. The church had seen many pastors over the years, and Opal knew that each one needed encouragement and prayer. This young pastor, just starting out, needed perhaps more than the others. She’d prayed that he would not become easily discouraged when he saw redeemed, yet still fallen, human nature collide with spiritual aspiration.

Opal hugged his wife, a small woman with an earnest face and a fierce need to defend her husband at all costs.

In front of Opal sat a new couple, young and poor with three rambunctious children. Opal spoke kindly to them and introduced them to Myrtle Tanner. Myrtle, a large woman, never missed church if she could help it.

She always sat in front. She went to Bible studies and events, but rarely said a word. Some weren’t sure she could read. Some thought she was a little sick in the head. But one thing Myrtle did have was a large, toothless smile, and she wasn’t afraid to use it.

Next to Myrtle sat the Evanses, a somber pair, always polite and proper.

Jeanie volunteered often and Paul sang on the worship team. Their faith was well-anchored, and they pitched in as often as their busy work schedules allowed. When they couldn’t help, they gave, and giving was a serious and secret ministry for them.

Paul had spent countless hours on the phone wrestling spiritual issues with his brother, trying to keep him from falling over a precipice. Jeanie took refuge in the scriptures and basked in their light daily -- and prayer was constant.

Also in front were two young couples, the Walters and the Von Warmerdams, newly converted and ready to go out and change the world. Their eyes were full of light and they oozed the fervency that many others in the congregation had experienced years earlier.

The women sang on the worship team, and the men led student Bible studies, visited nursing homes and helped at the local food pantry. Some of their friends, influenced by their witness, had begun to attend, too, though they sat in the back.

Opal settled into her favorite pew and took inventory of all the families and individuals God had placed in her church. She marveled at how different each one was from the others, and how God used them all, meshed them together, sprinkled His grace over them in intricate ways to achieve His ends.

But

something happened that Sunday to infect Opal’s inventory, and to sour her view. It was the opposite of fairy dust that dropped down that day. Call it devil droppings maybe. It was foul and it was fiendish. No one was ever sure where it began. You couldn’t point your finger at any one person.

It was a devilish operation, though, and the fallen angel in charge of it must have primed for the situation weeks earlier by planting a little doubt here, a little bitterness and regret there. Dissatisfaction with self became dissatisfaction transferred to the church and to others.

Someone didn’t get enough sleep. Someone else was not eating well that week. Another had stopped reading the word, and someone else felt he was too busy to pray. Together, the combination set the stage for the devil droppings.

The first Opal knew of it was that morning when Gwen Walter told her that she was not going to attend an out-of-town woman’s seminar event. “They are too staged,” Gwen said. “They are too artificial.”

Opal watched Mary Kerry’s face as Gwen said these words. It looked like someone had sucker-punched her.

Mary had arranged the trip and felt a need to defend it. Her defense included a mild accusation.

That day, and throughout the following weeks, two factions arose, propagated, spread and brought forth bitter fruit that rotted on the vine. The two opposing clusters of believers were - even after three or four weeks- mild factions, but factions nonetheless.

Sometimes, factiousness can simply fade away, but sometimes it accelerates. This time, it accelerated. Before long, women who had seen a few weak aspects of Mary’s personality pointed out what they had noticed, while her stalwart friends began to find fault with Gwen Walter.

By the second week before Christmas, personal affronts, long forgotten, revived and took on spiritual costumes. Someone had stepped on someone else’s toes. She was first characterized as thoughtless, then haughty. After a while she was seen as prideful and at last guilty of “spiritual wickedness in high places.”

Someone from the other faction was then characterized as first “forward,” then “arrogant and standoffish,” then a “busybody in other men’s matters,” and finally “divisive” and “heretical.”

Church members began squinting their eyes when looking at each other. Pretty soon everyone was on the defensive, having to produce Christian credentials at a moment’s notice.

Opal heard one exchange that made her cringe. Tiffany Van Warmerdam
demanded of Jenna a reason she wasn’t helping with the potluck preparations that week. Jenna sputtered for a moment and mentioned her help with the Easter dinner and prayer breakfast. She couldn’t help but mention that Tiffany hadn’t been around to help with the prayer breakfast.

Suddenly, Tiffany found herself on the defensive. She hadn’t helped with the breakfast because she had just returned from a mission trip! Everyone knew that a mission trip trumped a breakfast!

And on it went. The hallway near the nursery door became Checkpoint Charlie where you had to ruffle through your belongings and pull out the right Christian documentation or you would find yourself on the lowest rung of Christendom.

The fallen angel, accuser of the brothers, loved this scene. He was getting brothers and sisters to do his job for him, and all he had to do was lay back and watch, with a satisfied smile.

Instead of seeing the good, they saw the imperfect in each other. They looked to see what others were doing – or not doing – “for God” rather than seeing God in all His mercy and greatness doing wonders in men and women.

Juliet doesn’t attend women’s Bible study. She must have a spiritual problem. Orville doesn’t help out on workdays. He’s a shirker.

No one in this church cares about prayer. Prayer is so minimal, it’s pathetic. Why
isn’t there a women’s prayer group?

No one will help with the Christmas basket project. No one here is a true servant. This church is full of self-centered layabouts.

The fallen angel dropped even more devil droppings, and the complaining picked up: The pastor doesn’t support missions very much. The pastor purchases sermon notes online. The pastor isn’t serious enough. The pastor doesn’t have much of a sense of humor.

What’s wrong with the men in this church? Why do the women do all the hard stuff?

Unless the folks in this church understand the end times like I do, they are missing the boat. They need to open their eyes immediately.

I don’t understand why people here aren’t studying cults. Do they want their kids to fall into the pit? Be armed against the enemy! What’s the problem here?

The worship team never sings meaty songs. I liked what we used to do. When will
they sing something new? They only sing “Jesus-is-my-girlfriend” songs now. Not
enough hymns. Too many hymns. Not enough fast songs. Not enough slow songs. Not enough songs!

”Why doesn’t Vince ever attend men’s Bible studies? He must have no fervor for the Lord.

Why don’t the Firths ever help with Sunday school? What’s their hangup?

Myrtle won’t volunteer for nursery duty and she has no kids and plenty of time.

What’s eating the pastor’s wife anyway?

Why don’t people dress up more? Why don’t people dress down more? Why do
they keep showing off their fancy clothes? Can you imagine? Shorts? Heavens! A three-piece suit? The poor will turn around and walk out. Give me a break.

People aren’t tithing, people aren’t singing, people aren’t working.

If you’re not jogging, you’re not walking with the Lord, said one man. If you’re not sprinting, you’re not walking with the Lord, said another. If you don’t do handsprings, if you don’t do cartwheels, if you don’t form a Conga line…If you don’t walk on water like I do…

Opal began to wonder if people had to creak when they walked to serve the Lord, but just smiled at herself as that thought came and went and left for good.

Even the young pastor began to complain. The congregation, he said to his wife, is only concerned about itself. I don’t think I want to pastor a church that won’t see beyond itself. His wife agreed and looked with sadness on the rows of pews filled with ungrateful worshipers.

In short order, the machine with neatly meshing gears was gummed up. Gummed up so much that even Thelma’s patented church oil wouldn’t lubricate the workings.

The Sunday before Christmas, Opal was distressed. She had seen this situation arise more than once in her 92 years, and nothing good ever seemed to come of it. But she knew there was only one thing to do, and do it she would.

Opal managed to bend her arthritic knees.

It took some doing. First, she had to move the coffee table so she had a free path. Next, she had to pull the kitchen chair over to the armchair in the living room. When she was positioned between the two chairs she had to grip the arm of the armchair while pushing on the seat of the kitchen chair. Slowly, and painfully, she lowered herself into an excruciating, kneeling position.

“Father,” she whispered, and it had been months since she had whispered to her Good Friend in such a position, “Help us to see each other through Your eyes and not to be deceived. Let us all see the good and come to you. Help us all to be begging You to undo the evil. I beg you, Father, to have mercy on our little family. Keep me from seeing what isn’t there, and help me to see what is.”

Opal was fervent and she knew and believed strongly about the effectiveness of fervent prayer from righteous men. She wanted to carry the burdens of all the congregation but knew she was too small and weak for that. She knew who could, though. She knew who could.

When she was finished pouring out her words and fears and hopes and worship, she spent a good five minutes bending her joints and pushing hard to get back up.

Only one prayer. One prayer from a woman who didn’t attend a conference or help with Sunday school or wield a hammer at a work day or volunteer for the nursery. One prayer from a woman too old to go to the mission field and too weary to sing on the worship team and too wan even to serve at a potluck.

Despite its simplicity, or maybe because of it, God heard Opal’s Christmas prayer.
At the Christmas Eve service it was clear that all suspicion and blame and babble
had melted away.

Eyes were opened, weapons were dropped, smiles crept out from the somber faces -- and God’s own goodness residing in His people became clearer than the rough, uneven parts of their being that obscured Him.

Somehow, God allowed Opal, for her finale, to grab a broom and sweep up the devil droppings from between the pews.

Opal smiled in wonder at Mary and Gwen together removing ornaments from the tree in the foyer after the Christmas Eve service. She would have helped, but she was called elsewhere at that moment.

No one in this story is based on any actual individual. Similarities to real people are purely and totally coincidental. All characters in this story are fictional and not based on anyone currently living, except Art Hacker. :)

Donna Marmorstein Dec. 2008 All Rights Reserved