Hot Chocolate and Christmas Cookies

It was the very best Christmas ever.

It was late afternoon, the snow was still falling gently—it looked like a picture of a scene in an old-fashioned sentimental Christmas movie—and Laurie DeJager lay on her bed with a brand new cell phone in her hand.

Best. Christmas. Ever.

Oh, before we go further, I must tell you, I first heard this story from Laurie—about 13 years ago, and retold it for the first time the very next year around Christmastime. So this was back when most girls her age didn’t have a cell phone. And the one she had just received for Christmas looked just like this one—   [show phone]       

And as she admired it and entered the names of her friends and their phone numbers… An even bigger surprise than the phone itself… It RANG! It RANG! Excitedly Laurie pressed the green key and said softly, “Hello?” And then a bit louder, “Hello?”

“Hello, Laurie--”

“Hello, who IS this?”
“Hello, Laurie, this is Jesus.”

“What??!!”

Laurie looked at the phone. Speechless.

“Laurie, are you still there? This is Jesus—“

Laurie giggled, and said, “Yes, Jesus?” and she KNEW it must be her dad playing a trick on her. She dashed down the stairs to catch him in the act. But—what?!—there he was, in his easy chair, sound asleep, the only sound in the room his snoring and the movie on the TV where Ralphie was hinting about a Red Ryder BB gun.

Back in her room, trying to figure it all out, the phone rang again. Taking a deep breath, Laurie answered again.

“Laurie, this is Jesus, now don’t you hang up on me.”

“Jesus? Really? What would you be calling ME about?”

“Just one simple thing. I’d like to meet you for hot chocolate and Christmas cookies.”

“How do YOU know about hot choc—oh, yeah, right, I guess you know everything—“

Hot chocolate and Christmas cookies:  Laurie was more than a little bit sentimental about hot chocolate and Christmas cookies. Every year for as long as she could remember her grandmother would invite her over for hot chocolate and Christmas cookies—just the two of them—her grandmother made batches and batches of cookies—mostly stars and trees—usually the week after Thanksgiving.

Laurie was sentimental about a lot of things—her annual date with Grandma, to be sure, but even now that she’d turned 13—and, you need to know, Laurie really felt like this meant she was now a “grown up”—yet even now she was still pretty attached to her four special friends that sat around a small table in her bedroom—now that I think about it, it almost looked like the table in Bonnie’s room in Toy Story 3 (that’s the one where they escape from Sunnyside Day Care)—a table with four chairs, one for each of her most special friends:  two American Girl dolls, a Raggedy Ann, and a big brown teddy bear. But no, no porcupine name Mr. Pricklepants in this story.  Anyway, I tell you all this because Laurie was now 13 and sometimes torn between being all grown up and loving her dolls—she had this feeling like maybe “IMAGINATION” and being grown up were incompatible. She felt this way even though she didn’t really know the word “incompatible” but she just felt like maybe some things didn’t go together.   Like having a cell phone and playing with dolls.    

And some of these thoughts were running through her head when she fell asleep that night, thinking of the next day, the day AFTER Christmas, a Sunday, the day she would meet Jesus for hot chocolate and Christmas cookies at three o’clock….  Which took some sneakiness on her part because her family ALWAYS ate Sunday dinner at Grandma’s after church, and there were extra desserts and expectations of maybe helping with the 1000-piece annual Christmas puzzle. But Grandma’s house was only 9 or 10 blocks from home and she’d walked it a million times. And as 2:30 approached and she walked, bundled up, she congratulated herself on her creativity. She had escaped the puzzle and her crazy little brother and her great aunt who smelled like lavender soap and green tea.  And now she was nearly home when she bumped—she LITERALLY bumped—into Mrs. Jones, their almost-next door neighbor two houses down.

“Are you alright?” Laurie was worried and apologized and helped Mrs. Jones up… they had BOTH landed in the snow… and all the while Mrs. Jones just laughed and laughed at the sight and Laurie thought this might have been the first time she saw her laugh for a long time. Mr. Jones had died in May. And as they brushed each other off, without a thought, Laurie asked, “Would you like some hot chocolate and Christmas cookies? My treat?”

And so they sat around the kitchen table in Laurie’s otherwise empty house. And when Mrs. Jones finally went home it was past 3:30.

Ding-dong.

Laurie jumped to attention and cleared the last crumb off the table and dashed to the door. “Jesus rings the doorbell?” she wondered—

And opening the door it wasn’t Jesus at all but her old friend. OLD friend. Emphasis on OLD. Becky Johnson. Who had turned 13 six months earlier than Laurie—over a year ago—and who immediately, upon turning 13, turned into a—a—well, Laurie couldn’t even THINK that word on a Sunday.

It would take too long to tell you all the details. But something amazing happened. Becky apologized to Laurie and Laurie said, “I forgive you.” And Laurie said, “I’m sorry for calling you a nasty word,” and Becky said, I forgive you.”  And they hugged and shared yellow stars—biting off the points in little bites—and green Christmas trees—biting off the frosting star off each other’s—and sipped hot chocolate. And cried a little. And laughed again.

And by now would you be surprised if I told you the next visitor wasn’t Jesus either, but Laurie’s goofy little brother? And that they shared hot chocolate and Christmas cookies together?

And it was the best Sunday after Christmas ever except when Laurie remembered, as she lay in bed nearly two hours past her bedtime, and half-awake she began to cry.

The phone rang.

“Hello.”

“Jesus?” Laurie tried to hold back her tears. “Jesus, I thought we were going to have—But, but you never showed up. You never came.”

 “Oh, Laurie. I did come. I came three times.”

“What??! I don’t understand,” Laurie said.

“Do you remember the Christmas story? Not the one with Ralphie, but the one with shepherds and a baby born to Mary and Joseph, in a dark, smelly stable with animals all around?”

Laurie nodded.

“Laurie, not many people—no one, in fact—expected to find me lying in a manger. The shepherds didn’t expect it—the angels had to tell them. The magi didn’t expect a baby in a manger—they were following a bright star looking for a king—in a palace or mansion. No one expected to find me there. And today, you didn’t expect to find me in your brother, or in Becky, or in Mrs. Jones. But after you think about it—maybe tomorrow, maybe next year—you’ll realize you really did. And you know what else, Laurie?...

Your brother, and Mrs. Jones, and Becky… they each experienced God’s Love in you, Laurie. They all had hot chocolate and Christmas cookies with me… through you…

So don’t be sad, Laurie. There’s too much sadness in the world. There’s too much anger and hatred and holding grudges and hunger in the world too. Things aren’t all perfect yet, but someday they will be. Until then, Laurie, you and others who love me are called to be Living Signs of my Love. Today, Laurie, you brought gladness and healing to Mrs. Jones, who’s been grieving; you and Becky brought reconciliation into the world by forgiving each other; and you brought grace and joy into the world in the small act of spending an hour with your brother. So keep looking for me, OK? In the most unlikely places… OK?”

Laurie said “yes” softly as she fell asleep, cell phone in hand.

Best. Christmas. Ever.