~The Blessing~

I sat huddled against the night, tugging my cloak a bit tighter around me. It was one
of those nights where the stillness seems to cover you like a shroud, and the chill
slips under your coat almost unnoticed, like that unseen hand that passes over the pond
and leaves behind the shimmer of ice. I felt the crackle of cold as I breathed in, and
watched the mysterious transformation of the invisible made visible as I breathed out.
I was alone, but did not feel alone.

The sky was deep, a distant mantle of black velvet, yet so sequined with stars that I
couldn't look away. The majesty of it humbled me. Kept me there, looking up,...
wondering. Did the Shepherds sit in a night like this? Did they huddle together, just
inside the rim of light that a small fire cast. Did they sit, as I did now, high on
the hillsides, looking down on a few glimmers of light that the sleeping city below
still offered. Seeing afar off a comfort and warmth that was never theirs.

Keeping watch as others slept. The city below would have been safe against the night.
But for the Shepherds, a night this dark would be an open door of danger for the sheep.
The cold would be no barrier to the wolf. The dark only an opportunity for the thief. No,
they sat then, as I sat now.

Watching and waiting. Expecting the unexpected. Waiting for the light. Listening
through the stillness.

What was it like...to hear that silent waiting broken by the song of angels? To hear
that unspeakably beautiful cacophony of voices cutting through the night, filling the
skies, filling their ears, filling their hearts!

O Lord! You are here. I feel your presence. And I thank you. But how I would like to
have heard that glorious offering of angel voice and praise.

I search the skies, and strain to hear in the overwhelming silence. I should go. It is
time to get back to hearth and home. But still I sit. Just a few moments more with Him.

And then I hear it. The first tone is soft across the night -- deep and rich and golden,
it lifts itself to the skies and flies past me...only to echo off the mountain behind me
and roll down and wash over me. And then another tone, higher than the first, clear and
clean and sparkling in its purity. And then another, and another. Singing that joins
and becomes a harmony that no human voice can emulate. It fills the night air, reaches
to the heavens, drops back down to shower all around me...bouncing and tumbling off the
mountains until I am saturated. And then it stops. Over but for the one final full
voice. The first voice,-- now the last. The Alpha, now too, the Omega.

Wolf song. Done from a memory as old as creation. Thank you, Lord for your great gift.

Peace, Love, Joy, and Christmas Blessings from my heart to yours.

~The Hetz Family, and Nightwatch