"Up There"

By Elizabeth Woodward

     One Christmas, I was at church holding my two-year-old nephew before the evening Christmas service started.

     The person playing hymns and songs before the service started to play the song, “O Come, O Come, Emmanuel.”

     Ever since my nephew was a baby, that song had always been something special to him.  When he would cry, we would play it for him and he would stop and listen.

     At this service he was just playing with some toys.  He hadn’t heard that song for at least a year.  Then as they started playing it, he stopped what he was doing and listened.  Then he said,

     “That song, I like it.  This Church, I like it.”  Then pausing, seeming to try to find the words he wanted to use to explain what he felt, he said, pointing up, “Up there.”

      It was so amazing to me, for truly this Church is “up there”, meaning in heaven.  Emmanuel will come again.