This beautiful story, that I just had to share was originally printed in
Guideposts Magazine. © 1988 by Guideposts Associates, Inc. Carmel, New York 10512
Reprinted by Miracle Distribution's Holy Encounter newsletter, December 2014.
Christmas 1914
The Great War was only a few months old, but already the two sides
were deadlocked in the grisly new pattern of trench warfare. Both the
British and Germans had learned to shovel miles-long ditches in the
rocky French farmland, ditches from which men blasted at one another
with machine guns and mortars. In these muddy, rat-infested trenches,
British soldiers opened soggy Christmas greetings from their King while a
few hundred yards away German troops read a message from the Kaiser.
Between the rows of trenches, where shivering men thought about
families at home, lay a barren no-man’s-land, a zone of craters and
shattered trees where anything that moved was instantly fired at. So
narrow was this strip that whenever there was a lull in the roar of the
guns, each side could hear the clink of cooking gear from the other.
Late on Christmas Eve, with the sleet tapering off and the
temperature dropping, a British Tommy on guard with the Fifth Scottish
Rifles heard a different sound drifting across no-man’s-land. In the
German trenches a man was singing.
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht…”
It was a tune the British soldier recognized as “Silent Night, Holy
Night.” The sentry began to hum along with the melody. Then, louder, he
chimed in with the English words, singing an odd duet with his enemy
beyond the barbed wire.
“…heilige Nacht…holy night…”
A second British soldier crawled to the sentry station and joined in.
Little by little others on both sides picked up the song, blending
their rough voices across the shell-pocked landscape. The Germans broke
out with a second carol, “O Tannenbaum,” and the British replied with
“God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen.” On and on the antiphonal singing went. A
British soldier with binoculars reported that the Germans had hoisted a
ragged evergreen with lighted candles in the branches to the top of the
sandbag barrier. As dawn of Christmas day broke, signs appeared on both
sides, in two languages: “Merry Christmas.”
Pulled by a force stronger than fear, one by one the soldiers started
laying down their arms, creeping beneath barbed wire and around mortar
holes into no-man’s-land. At first it was just a few men, then more and
more, until scores of British and German troops met together in the
first light of Christmas day. The boys brought out photographs of
mothers and wives, exchanged gifts of candy and cigarettes. Someone
produced a soccer ball and the men played on a few yards of crater-free
ground.
Then the Soldier’s truce was over.
By mid-morning Christmas day, horrified officers had summoned their
men back to the trenches; firing had recommenced. Within hours the Fifth
Scottish Rifles issued an order forbidding such contact: “We are here
to fight, not to fraternize.”
And the soldiers obeyed. The war, as history tragically records,
destroyed almost that entire generation of young men on both sides. But
there was an indelible memory in the minds of those who lived to recall
that first Christmas at the front. The memory of a few hours when their
master had been neither King nor Kaiser, but the Prince of Peace.
No matter the conflict that may be raging in your life, take a moment
to withdraw your loyalty from the ego’s world and allow the Prince of
Peace to be born into your awareness. Even if it is only for a moment,
ask the Holy Spirit to be your eyes, your tongue, your hands, your feet,
so that your one purpose may be to bless the world with miracles of
peace. (Lesson 353 paraphrased)
God bless you, dear friends, on your journey of peace and joining this holiday season.
