As a minister, people ask me where I see hope. It feels like this query is getting more difficult to answer these days. But if I can muster up the courage, then I tell folks all they need to do is go outside and look up.
That’s my suggestion, my prayer for them. I point them toward the stars. Hope orbits these stellar masses of hydrogen and helium.
Yet, not all stars hang in the heavens. At least not a heaven some of us might be familiar with.
In the North Carolina foothills, there is an anomaly—a smaller Milky Way. It explodes up and back out against the darkness of the night. Resting below the firmament, you see this evidence on front porches—soft illumination lighting up haint blue ceilings.
Other times, they appear on cast-iron poles. Raised gently into the sky like a hand offering a toast. A constellation that twinkles, when what is above looks down on what is below with envy.
These earthly counterparts gaze upward with prideful resilience.
In the way sailors look for celestial bodies, I do the same with Moravian stars. I feel either can bring a weary traveler home.
There’s is a light I know. A hope I see time and time again.
History and legend say these arrived on Earth in the mid-19th century. They crashed into Germany at a Moravian boys’ school. A geometry project come to life, the community in Niesky embraced the design.
Instructions for building them began popping up in shops and bookstores. Finally, a factory was created. A version of this original undertaking now operates at the Moravian Church-owned Herrnhuter Sterne GmbH.
There is a myth that stars fall. They don’t. Meteors do.
But stars do move. Slowly, unperceived by the naked eye. The feat takes thousands of years.
The star of Deutschland didn’t wait that long. Neither did its people.
Before the star, the spiritual descendants of Jan Hus arrived in the Carolinas in 1753, starting a community they named Bethabara. Folks then began to spread out. Salem was founded in 1766 as part of the Wachovia Tract.
Not a hundred years later, the people of that settlement sold some of the northern property to the budding county called Forsyth. This new “city” was named Winston after Revolutionary War hero Joseph Winston.
The neighboring towns existed independently until the US Post Office grew restless in separating their mail and decided to combine the two. This decision became official in 1913, and Winston-Salem was born and named.
We don’t know the exact date the star arrived in Salem. Still, we do know that the city of Winston-Salem began displaying it as part of Christmas decorations in 1959. Things have been this way ever since.
The star appears every year at the top of what locals still refer to simply as Baptist Hospital. Inferior titles such as Wake Forest School of Medicine and Atrium Health are ignored and damned for their attempts at overcomplication.
It glows around Moravian churches throughout the Piedmont, climbs the mountains around the Biltmore Estate, and slides off into the sea near Cape Hatteras.
It lights the porch steps to almost every home in the historic district of Winston-Salem. Old Salem has become a place like Williamsburg, Virginia, and Sturbridge, Massachusetts, a living history museum.
This is where I came to know the star. This is where my family came year after year to the Moravian Candle Tea.
We’d gather near the walls of the Single Brothers House, awaiting entrance. Our ears red from the cold, they perked up at the sound of carols played on polished brass.
We shuffled along, listening to the quartet, praying our turn to march inside would come soon. It never came soon enough, but the Advent-like wait was part of the experience.
Once inside, we met warm hands and faces. Well-worn floorboards greeted us with hospitable creaks. We stood outside a room, where the traces of singing could be heard.
Soon, a door would open, and we would be permitted inside to take a seat on one of the dozen or so long benches.
We’d huddled together as a family, seated beside strangers, and listened as a volunteer told us the history of the pipe organ she or he sat behind. Only after they were done were musical requests taken.
To this day, I cannot sing “O Little Town of Bethlehem,” “Silent Night,” or “O Come, All Ye Faithful” without thinking of my time in that room.
I cannot hear the words of “Morning Star, O Cheering Sight” without getting a little sentimental. I climb into a time machine each time I answer the responsive call.
Morning Star, O cheering sight!*
Ere thou cam’st, how dark earth’s night!
Morning Star, O cheering sight!
Ere thou cam’st, how dark earth’s night!
Jesus mine, in me shine;
in me shine, Jesus mine;
fill my heart with light divine.
When I’d sung off-key enough, I followed others downstairs into the candle-making room.
The smell of honey permeated the hallways and raised my blood sugar several milligrams. My sister and I would each get a small candle wrapped in red ribbon. The heat of our hands slightly melted the wax as we continued on.
Next came the kitchen, and out would come the large wooden trays filled with Moravian coffee, an elixir made of spices like cinnamon, ginger, and cloves, brewed with the coffee grounds. The cream colored mugs forced my hands into a position of intercession.
With it was served sugarbread, to which there are only inadequate words used to describe a morsel so satisfying to the soul. However, a clue is in the name, “sugar-bread.”
Carbs and sugar. A match made on earth, as I’m sure it is in heaven.
I would try and fail to save a bite or two to take with me into the next room. Losing never tasted so good.
Further down still was the sub-basement. The home of the “putz.” Walking into it for the first time, I thought the movie “Beetlejuice” had come to life.
Before me on large tables was a microdisplay of the entire village of Salem. Each year, we were told a new piece was added. The second putz was in an adjacent room.
Shoulder to shoulder, in mostly darkness, we listened to the words of a man known as Luke. Small lights cast shadows over the decorations. Shepherds in the fields. A manager with animals. Angels in the sky.
And the words continued to come.
Suddenly a great company of the heavenly host appeared with the angel, praising God and saying,
‘Glory to God in the highest heaven,
and on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.’
When the angels had left them and gone into heaven, the shepherds said to one another, ‘Let’s go to Bethlehem and see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has told us about.’
At this, the final switch was flipped, and the star was lit.
A Moravian star.
We’d leave in silence, out and up stone steps. Into a night that we’d left but hadn’t forgotten about. Exchanging one form of darkness for another, we ascended out of that human-made cave into a world made new.
And the first things I’d see looking up were stars.
One star leads to many.
And many stars lead to hope.
I have plans to stand beneath both in the coming weeks. I’ll let you know if I still find this to be true.
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Justin Cox received his theological education from Campbell University, Wake Forest University School of Divinity, and McAfee School of Theology where he earned his Doctor of Ministry. He is an ordained minister holding standing in the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship and American Baptist Churches USA. When not spending time with his spouse and daughters, he can be found writing and baking late into the night. His thoughts and reflections are his own.
