He held the pulpit rail tightly and raised his voice: ‘For perhaps He has already come. Perhaps you will meet Him as you leave the church after Mass. Perhaps He is one of those who will ask you for a krone for the bus. Or perhaps you will see Him on a poster for Church Aid, one of the Ethiopian children who at this moment are in agony, dying of hunger and 340thirst. And you haven’t seen Him. For you don’t know who He is. So turn to the Lord before it is too late. Join with Jesus before he opens the eventide book to see if your name is there. Don’t allow yourselves to be deceived into thinking Christmas has any other message than this: Jesus came once. And Jesus will come again.’

I discreetly looked around. The message seemed to be hitting home. The old, who had already felt the first blush of eventide on their cheeks, were ready to fall to their knees. The young stared in rapture at the eloquent preacher, and even in my own hardened heart I felt a longing to turn to Jesus.

But we were not the people he should have been talking to. We were not the ones who were the real wilderness.

He should have been in the main streets stopping the traffic. He should have been in the big department stores and outside the malls, demanding that his voice be heard. But if he had done that I was afraid the shoppers would have trampled all over him and shouted for the return of Barabbas, while Salome on the cash till would have screamed for his head on a platter and registered this as a bonus on her December pay cheque.

And as our eyes met again, before he came down from the pulpit, I saw that he knew, that he had been thinking exactly the same, that he had been preaching to the converted and the whole message went in one ear and came out the other.

The last hymn rang out: ‘When the dark of winter is all around.’

With the last note of the post-ludium hanging there, like a delicate echo in the brown walls, we got up.

I timed my exit to walk along the aisle with Sissel and Anita Solheim, politely said hello and asked: ‘Tell me, have you heard from Ruth?’

Anita Solheim glared at me and shook her head. ‘She’s fine 341out there in Lindås.’

‘And you?’ I asked Sissel.

She looked at me with her little face and blushed. ‘N-no.’

‘Because she’s no longer there,’ I added.

‘No?’ Anita exclaimed, suddenly alarmed.

‘No,’ I said in a soft voice. ‘So I thought she might’ve got in touch … before Christmas.’

We were now beside Berge Brevik, who was standing at the exit and shaking hands with the congregation.

‘Thank you again…’ I heard Anita say in response to his sympathetic smile.

He sent a cheerier smile to Sissel and said: ‘Thank you for your reading, Sissel. It was lovely. Have you answered everything on your form?’