Max Lucado - The Christmas Candle

Fans of Charles Dickens and Jan Karons Mitford series, youre in for a treat! Max Lucado has penned a wholly original Christmas story complete with cobblestone streets, quirky characters, and a supernatural visit that youll never forget. I never miss the opportunity to read a new Max Lucado book and neither should you.

JOHN C. MAXWELL
Best-selling author and Founder of
INJOY Stewardship Services and EQUIP

The Christmas Candle is a beautiful story of hope and miracles. Max paints the characters with such richness that they truly become alive in your mind. Expect to be moved and inspired as you read this wonderful depiction of the power of believing.

JOYCE MEYER

A powerful reminder of the true meaning of faith and community, The Christmas Candle is a welcome respite from the harried commercialism of the holiday season.

BOOK PAGE

The Christmas Candle shines with a radiant insight. Written with Max Lucados signature style of sincerity and spiritual perception, this story will warm the readers heart with the wonders of Gods love and mercy.

IN THE LIBRARY REVIEWS

The
CHRISTMAS CANDLE

MAX LUCADO

Copyright 2006 by Max Lucado

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or otherexcept for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

Thomas Nelson titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail SpecialMarkets@ThomasNelson.com.

Publishers Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

978-1-40168-994-0 (2013 Repackage)

ISBN 978-1-41858-754-3 (eBook)

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lucado, Max.

The Christmas candle / Max Lucado.

p. cm.

ISBN: 978-1-59554-147-5 (regular edition)

ISBN: 978-1-59554-278-6 (SE)

1. Christmas stories. I. Title.

PS3562.U225C45 2006

813'.54dc22

2006000706

For Greg and Susan Ligon:
Celebrating the lumination
you bring to so many

CONTENTS

December 1664

Light exploded in the small house, making midnight seem as daylight. The bearded candle maker and his wife popped up in bed.

Wh-wh-what is it? she said, trembling.

Dont move!

But the children?

Theyre sleeping. Stay where you are!

The wife pulled the blanket up to her chin and took a quick look around the shad-owless room: children asleep on the floor, the table and chairs resting near the hearth, tools piled in the corner.

The candle maker never shifted his wide-eyed gaze. The figure wore a singular flame: a heatless tongue stretching from ceiling to floor. His form moved within the blaze: a torso, head, and two arms. He reached out of the radiance and extended a finger toward a rack of hanging candles. When he did, the couple squeezed together and slid farther back in the bed.

The husband mustered a question: Are you going to hurt us?

The visitor gave no reply. He waited, as if to ensure the couple was watching, touched one of the candles, and then vanished.

The room darkened, and the just-touched candle glowed. The man instinctively reached for it, stepping quickly out of bed and across the room, grabbing the candle just as the light diminished.

He looked at his wife. She gulped.

What just happened? she asked.

I dont know.

He moved to the table and sat. She hurried to do the same.

An angel? she wondered aloud.

Must be.

He placed the candle on the table, and both stared at it. Neither knew what to say or to think.

The next morning found them still sitting. Still staring.

Their children awoke, so they ate breakfast, dressed warmly, and walked the half mile up Bristol Lane to St. Marks Church for the celebration of the final Sunday of Advent.

The candle maker gave the rector extra candles for the Advent service but kept the angel-touched candle in his coat pocket. He started to mention the visitation to the reverend but stopped short. He wont believe me.

The couple tried to concentrate on the sermon but couldnt. Their minds kept reliving the light, the angel, and the glowing candle.

They shared a pew with a young mother and her two children, all three disheveled and dirty. The couple knew her, knew how her husband, a servant to a baron, had died a month before in a hunt.

After the service the widow described her plight to them. We have little food left. Enough for a few days.

The chandlers wife reached into her husbands coat pocket for a coin. When she did, she felt the candle. She handed both to the young mother, inviting, Light this and pray. As the young mother turned to leave, the wife looked at her husband and shrugged as if to say, What harm?

He nodded.

They spoke some about the candle over the next few days but not much. Both were willing to dismiss it as a dream, perhaps a vision.

The Christmas Eve service changed that. It began with a time of blessing-sharing. Anyone in the congregation who wanted to give public thanks to God could do so. When the rector asked for volunteers, the young mother stood up. The same woman who, days earlier, had appeared unkempt and hungry. This night she beamed. She told the congregation how a wealthy uncle in a nearby county had given her a farm as a gift. The farm was a godsend. She could live in the house and lease the land and support her family. She looked straight at the candle maker and his wife as she said, I prayed. I lit the candle and prayed.

The couple looked at each other. They suspected a connection between the candle and the answered prayer, but who knew for sure?

CHAPTER 1
AFTERNOON

May 4, 1864

I just think it odd that Oxford would assign its top student to a village like Gladstone, Edward Haddington said to his wife, Bea. A broad-shouldered man with a brilliant set of dark eyes and full, gray eyebrows, he wrestled to button the waistcoat over his rotund belly.

Equally plump Bea was having troubles of her own. How long since I wore this dress? she wondered aloud. Must I let it out again? Then louder, Edward, hurry.

Hes due within the hour.

Dont you think it odd?

I dont know what to think, dear. But I know we need to leave now if we dont want to be late. He arrives at half-past one.

The couple hurried out of the small gabled house and scurried the half mile south on Bristol Lane toward the center of the village. They werent alone. A dozen or more villagers walked ahead of them. By the time Edward and Bea reached the town commons, at least half the citizens of Gladstone, some sixty people, stood staring northward. No one noticed the white-haired couple. All eyes were on the inbound wagon.

The driver pulled the horses to a halt, and a young man stood to exit. He bore beady eyes, a pointed chin, and his angular nose seemed to descend forever before finding a place to stop. With a tall hat in his hand and a black coat draped on his shoulders, Rev. David Richmond surveyed the crowd. Edward detected a sigh. We must appear odd to him, he whispered to Bea.