The Christmas Candle

By: Max Lucado / Narrated By: Greg Whalen

Length: 1 hr and 43 mins

About finding and having faith

Let’s just get Greg Whalen’s narration out of the way. Or, perhaps I should say, the choice of an American as a narrator for the audiobook. The story takes place in the rural reaches of England, the characters are all country British, so it’s kinda strange listening to the narrative in American English, then switching over to a guy lumbering through some put-upon accents. Truly, he does a decent job, but maybe a Brit could’ve been obtained for such a book? Just sayin’…

The Christmas Candle is a short audiobook, and it definitely has its warmth and charm. The village of Gladstone is receiving a new minister after their own minister of fifty years has died and no other minister will agree to serve such a rural and sorta backwards little place. Their new minister is a man who preaches the church's teachings but who has little room for faith, especially as it concerns Gladstone’s preoccupation with the Christmas Candle, a candle lit every 25 years by an angel and given to a single somebody with great needs: If you pray by this special candle, God will come to your aid and will deliver you.

The reverend scoffs at this. After all, why would God help but one person when there are so many, many in need. And the candlemaker wonders this also. This Christmas Eve the angel is due to visit, and already the candlemaker has been visited by EVERYbody, all hoping to receive the candle. There are financial needs, health concerns, questions of lack of faith. Even the candlemaker and his wife have need of the candle this year as their family line appears to be at an end, with no children or grandchildren to carry on the occupation or the mission.

The story follows the lives and difficulties of the community, and when it comes to the night the angel visits, we discover that through an unforeseen mishap, the candlemaker and his wife can’t say definitively which candle has been blessed this 25-year date. What’s to be done? Well, with so much need, and with so many people needing miracles, there’s only one thing to do: Give out all the candles and let God bless whomever He meant to.

This, along with a carriage accident which offers a chance for the reverend to redeem himself and to be redeemed in turn by God, makes The Christmas Candle a wonderful story of how faith and love are all that matters, and how God looks after his most-loved experiment: mankind.

If you’re looking for a nice tale of faith, love, hope, and redemption, look no further but give The Christmas Candle a try!

Ben Holland only narrator found now.