There is a light that never goes out (2)

“Lord watch over us in these trouble times, shine light upon us so that we may see the one true way, even in the darkness.”

The vicar’s words powered through the empty church, seeming not to care that there was no-one to hear them. They were God’s words, after all, and God’s words always find a way to be heard.

The vicar had stayed in London in spite of the tiger. “There are people here who need me,” he said. His predecessor, who had predicted nuclear Armageddon as harbinger of the second coming, had built a nuclear bunker under the church, stocked with enough tinned food and drink to last his family at least two years. The new vicar did not share the belief in nuclear war and was using these resources to feed the needy in his flock.

He ran a soup kitchen every evening, making inroads into the enormous pile of Heinz and other tins. Usually, of course, his soup was made using fresh ingredients, by one of his volunteers, but she had moved away because of the tiger, besides which there were no fresh ingredients to be had.

Though many people still came to his soup kitchen, his church services were empty. His usual flock had departed, going to stay with friends and family in safer parts of the UK.

Why he preached sermons to an empty church he never said, for there was nobody there to ask him. Had anybody been there they would have heard him speak with clarity and passion about the issue of faith under the fire of fear.

She crept into the church while he was speaking, the thin girl with the tiger scars up her arm. He was so engrossed in his words that he never even saw her. She sat and listened as he spoke of the sacrifice God had made in sending his son and urged the church to show no fear in the face of the tiger.

When the sermon finished and the vicar finally noticed her, he greeted her with unrestrained joy, took her into the vestry and fed her Heinz tomato soup in his makeshift kitchen.

She looked no better or worse than when he had last seen her. Still bone-thin and troubled, but at least she was eating, possibly for the first time since the tiger broke out. He watched her slurp her way through two large cans of soup.

After she had eaten there was an awkward silence, he didn’t want to scare her off with prayers again.

“Coffee?” he asked with enthusiasm, “the perfect finish to a meal.”

She shrugged okay.

“Father,” she said as he worked the cafetiere.

“Yes,” he turned to her.

“How can I become a good person?” she asked.

“Ah now, there’s a good question,” he said, and bringing her coffee to her spent the next hour trying to answer it.