And we're back with the second and final part of A Friend for Christmas (if you missed the first part of this story that was shared last week, you can check that out here), as well as the final post here before Jesus' birthday! (Though there may or may not be a slightly Christmas-y post coming the day after Christmas, because, who doesn't want to keep the joy going for one more day? :D) I hope you enjoy the last part of this story! Katherine touched up the edges of the Christmas tree-shaped sugar cookie that she was decorating with a spatula, smearing the green icing over the edges. Amarise sat beside her on the kitchen bench, setting down the spatula she had been using to decorate the last snowman with white icing on a paper towel, and then laying the snowman on the full plate of cookies in the middle of the table. Nana walked up to the table from the sink where she had been washing the dishes from baking the cookies with the two children. “Are you girls finished decorating them?” she asked, wiping her wet hands on her bright green apron. “Uh huh,” Katherine replied, laying her spatula on the paper towel and the last Christmas tree cookie triumphantly on the plate next to Amarise's snowman. “Oh, y'all did a good job,” Nana admired the cookies on the plate. “And you did good about keeping the icing even too.” Katherine smiled and thought she saw Amarise blush a bit, though she did look happy that Mrs. Gordon thought that they had turned out well. “Can we eat one?” Katherine turned her eyes up to her grandmother standing beside the bench. Nana laughed. “Well, that's what they're for. Go ahead.” “Can we eat one in the living room, by the Christmas tree? Please?” Katherine ventured. Nana hesitated, though a smile twitched at the corners of her lips. “We'll be careful,” Katherine promised. “Won't we?” she glanced over at Amarise. Amarise nodded, her blonde curls bouncing on her back. “And we can use paper towels and won't get it on the floor,” Katherine pleaded. “Oh,” Nana put her hand to her forehead and pushed back her gray hair, laughing a bit, “Alright. But you have to promise to be very careful,” she added in a more serious tone. “We promise,” Katherine assured her. Amarise bobbed her head in agreement. “Okay,” Nana's voice still held hesitation. “I don't know why I'm agreeing to this though, Katherine,” she laughed, sounding half amused and half nervous. “Don't make me regret it.” Her eyes held a teasing, yet still serious, gleam. “We won't, and we'll try very hard to keep it on the paper towels.” Katherine slid off the bench, dashed over to the roll of paper towels by the sink, and ripped some off. “Oh, you'd better do more than try, Katherine Gordon,” Nana teased. Katherine grinned and dashed back over to the table, folding the towels on her way. She handed one to Amarise. “Come on,” she invited, grabbing one of the trees she had decorated off the table. Amarise rose from the bench and, after looking at her choices for a moment, slid one of the snowmen she had decorated off the plate and onto her paper towel. “Alright, you girls be careful. I'll be there in a minute, after I get the last of this stuff put away and my apron off,” Nana instructed. The two girls, holding their paper towels with both hands and being careful to keep the cookie exactly in the middle of the towel, walked out of the kitchen with Katherine leading the way. After reaching the living room, Katherine sat down in front of the lit Christmas tree, keeping her eyes on her cookie. She leaned back a bit against the black couch behind her. Amarise sat down beside her with even more care than her friend had. The room was dark, the only light being from the white lights of the Christmas tree and the two pretend candles Nana had put in the windowsill behind the tree. The darkness sent a bit of a shiver up Katherine's spine, filling her with even more excitement about the evening. “Wanna pray?” she asked, keeping her voice barely above a whisper so as to not break the tranquility of the room. “Sure,” Amarise agreed, her voice low as well. Silence followed, making Katherine giggle. “Who's going to pray?” “You.” Amarise gave a sly, bashful grin. “Okay.” Katherine bowed her head but didn't dare to close her eyes. She instead kept them fixed on her cookie to ensure it didn't fall. “Jesus, thank You for these cookies, and that Amarise could come over and we could spend time together. Amen.” Looking up, she picked up her Christmas tree and took a small bite off the bottom of it. She glanced over at Amarise, who was biting off the bottom circle of her snowman. “You eat the bottom first?” Amarise took her cookie down from her mouth and looked over at Katherine. “Uh huh. How come?” “I always like to eat his head first.” “That's mean.” Amarise took another bite of the cookie. Katherine grinned mischievously. “Well, that way, I can put him out of his misery before I go to eating on him.” Amarise stopped chewing and turned her full attention to the girl beside her. “Ew! It's not real!” “Yeah, I know,” Katherine giggled. Amarise glanced at her cookie, a slightly disgusted, critical gleam in her eye, then took another bite from the bottom. A few seconds of silence followed as the girls chewed. “Katherine?” Amarise spoke up, keeping her eyes turned downwards on her paper towel. “Uh huh?” “Thanks for being my friend.” Katherine smiled. “Thanks for being my friend too.” Amarise returned the smile and ate the last little bit of her snowman, then laid the paper towel on the floor beside her. Katherine swallowed hard. Here was her chance. “Amarise?” she ventured. “Have you ever made Jesus your Friend?” “Huh?” “I mean like, have you ever prayed and asked Him to save you?” Amarise kept her eyes turned partly downward toward her lap, though she looked up at her friend from the tops of her eyes. “I don't really know what that means,” she admitted. Katherine took the last bite of her cookie, thinking as she chewed. She'd never really tried to explain it to anyone before. But it couldn't hurt to try. How would she make it make sense though? Swallowing her cookie and laying the paper towel down, being careful to keep the crumbs in the middle of the towel so that they wouldn't fall onto the floor, she began. “Well, it just means that you know that you're a sinner and that you can't go to Heaven because of it, and instead when you die you have to go to a lake of fire called Hell, except for that Jesus was born, you know, the story Miss Sydney was telling, and He died on the cross so that we could go to Heaven and not Hell, and then you ask God to save you and you tell Him that you accept His gift on the cross and want Him to be your Friend, and He does.” Amarise stared at Katherine for a moment. “What's a sinner? And a cross?” Maybe she hadn't done too good at explaining it after all. Amarise looked confused. “A sinner is someone who does bad things, like everybody does, and a cross is these pieces of wood that they nailed Jesus to and killed him.” “Oh.” Amarise still looked a little bit confused. “How do you ask God something though?” “You just pray.” She really wasn't doing very good at this. “Want me to ask Nana to show you the verses about it in the Bible? I don't really know where they are.” Just then, Nana entered the living room, and came and sat down on the couch behind the girls. Katherine turned around to face her. “Nana, will you show Amarise the verses about how to get saved and stuff?” Nana looked over at Amarise, who had turned her eyes downward once again, fiddling with the fabric of her bright pink leggings. “Do you want to see them, Amarise?” Amarise nodded, turning her eyes upward a bit to meet Mrs. Gordon's for a second. Nana stood up and went over to the bookshelf on the other wall of the room. After pulling her Bible off of it, she walked back over to the couch and sat down. “Do you want to come up here so you can see?” Nana asked Amarise, patting the spot on the couch beside her. Amarise hesitated. Sensing her friend's nervousness, Katherine jumped on the couch, leaving the spot beside her grandmother open. “Come on,” she invited. Amarise stood up and sat in the open spot, keeping herself closer to Katherine than to Mrs. Gordon. “Well,” Nana began, “The first verse that I usually like to show people is Romans 3:23.” She flipped to the passage. “It says,” she read, tracing her finger underneath the words as she read them, “'For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God'. Some people like to think that they don't really do bad things, or they say that they're not that bad because they think that other people do worse things than they do. “But everybody has sinned, or done wrong things, and because of that, we can't go to Heaven when we die. Instead we have to go to a place where the Devil is, and there's fire, and we'll never be able to get out, because people who do bad things can't go to Heaven. But God loved us so much that He didn't want that to happen, so He came down to earth as a baby named Jesus. That's what Christmas is about. And when He got older, He was tortured and killed. That was how He got in trouble for us, so that we can go to Heaven when we die.” Katherine glanced over at Amarise as Nana flipped back a few pages in her Bible. Amarise was looking at Nana's Bible, and she looked like she was listening closely. Katherine felt her heart give a little skip. Maybe Amarise understood! “See, here,” Nana pointed underneath the verse she had flipped to, “It says, 'For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.' “Since He took our punishment for us, all we have to do to go to Heaven and to not have to go to that lake of fire when we die is to be sorry for the bad things we've done and to ask Him, just to pray and talk to Him like you would talk to anyone else, to save us. And if you really mean what you say, He will. He'll come and be in your heart, and one day when you do die, you'll get to go to Heaven and live with Him forever." Nana just sat there for a moment, quiet, and then shut her Bible, put it back on the bookshelf across the room, and returned to her spot on the couch. Katherine looked over at Amarise from the corner of her eyes. She was looking down at her lap but then turned her eyes up to Nana's. “Can I do that too?” Amarise asked, looking up but not meeting Nana's eyes. “Ask Jesus?” Nana asked. Amarise nodded. “Of course you can. Do you want to now?” Once again, Amarise just nodded. Her eyes focused on Nana's lap, as if she was intent despite her shyness. “What do I say?” she asked, barely above a whisper. “You just tell Jesus that you're sorry that you do wrong things and ask Him to forgive you and save you and take you to Heaven. That's it. There's not any fancy words or anything. You can just say it however you want to.” Nana bowed her head, and Amarise followed her lead. After Amarise didn't say anything for a few seconds, Katherine slipped her hand into hers and bowed her own head. Amarise's hand was shaking in hers. “Jesus,” Amarise whispered, barely audible, “I'm sorry that I do wrong things. Please forgive me and take me to Heaven when I die. Thank You.” Amarise didn't say “amen,” just lifted her head. But Katherine figured out she was done, and lifted her head; maybe Amarise just didn't know about saying that. Katherine squeezed her friend's hand. “You did it.” She could tell a small smile was pulling at the corners of Amarise's mouth. “Now, if you really meant what you said from your heart, there are angels in Heaven that are happy and singing about you asking Jesus to save you. And He's in your heart to stay.” Amarise let the smile loose. **** Katherine stood on the front porch next to Nana, waving at Amarise as her family's blue van pulled out of the driveway. The headlights, compounded by the Christmas lights shining down from around the top of the porch, prevented her from being able to see her friend, but she waved anyway until the van rounded onto the next street and out of sight. Nana put her arms around Katherine's shoulders and pulled her close in a sort of side hug. “You know how amazing that was?” “That Amarise got saved?” Katherine looked up at her grandmother. “Yeah. Just about two weeks ago you were upset about not having a friend, and look now,” Nana's voice held tears in it. “You took the time and effort and bravery to reach out to someone else, and now you have a friend and were able to share Jesus, the true Friend, with her.” “Yeah,” Katherine smiled. “It is amazing.” And that's it until after Christmas! This Christmas, let's not get distracted by the less important things and forget the true reason we celebrate: Jesus, our Friend, Who humbled Himself, left His glory, and became a man so that He could take our punishment and provide a Way for us to have restored fellowship with Him now and for all of eternity. How amazing is that? Do you have a verse that you've been meditating on this Christmas season that you'd like to share (whether it's usually thought of as a Christmas verse or not)?
1 Comment
Hannah Griggs
1/2/2023 11:34:29 am
I really enjoyed the ending of this story!
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