A Snowbound Christmas with Angels We Didn’t Know

A Three-Part Christmas Story, with Scripture

Part I — The Stop No One Expected

The storm rolled in just past sunset—thick, white, and relentless. From the windows of the westbound VIA Rail train, the world beyond Sudbury looked like someone had shaken a giant snow globe and forgotten to stop.

The conductor’s voice crackled over the speaker, “Ladies and gentlemen, Environment Canada has issued a severe winter storm warning. We’ve come to a safe stop on the line. We’ll get moving again as soon as conditions allow.”

A collective sigh travelled the length of the train.

In the dining car, four passengers stared at one another in the sudden quiet.

Margaret Greene, a retired schoolteacher with silver hair tucked neatly under a knitted beret, was stirring her now-lukewarm tea. Across from her sat Evan Thibeault, a widowed miner. Nearby, sixteen-year-old figure skater Kira Walters shifted anxiously, and no more than a table away, young father Noah Bradley rocked his infant daughter, Mara.

For a moment, no one spoke.

Then the lights flickered.

“Well,” Margaret said, setting down her cup, “I suppose that’s our cue to introduce ourselves before we’re doing it in the dark.”

Names were exchanged. Worries surfaced. Disappointments hinted at. Longings cracked open.

When Noah nervously admitted he feared travelling alone with a baby for the first time, Margaret smiled with the softness of someone who had comforted decades of frightened children.

“My mum used to quote a Scripture every Christmas,” she said gently. “Especially when storms hit—literal or otherwise.”

She folded her hands on the table and recited it quietly, the way one shares a familiar melody:

‘Keep on loving one another as brothers and sisters. Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.’— Hebrews 13:1–2 (NIV)

The words settled over the group like a warm quilt.

“Seems fitting tonight, doesn’t it?” she added.

Outside, the wind howled. Inside, something tender began to knit them together.