[Faith-talk] Daily Thought for Tuesday, December 17, 2013

[Paul]

Hello and good day to all of you.  Well, the calendar is reminding me that, in eight days, Santa Claus or Father Christmas will be visiting us to give us the latest and greatest iPhones or iPads, whichever you'd like to have, not to mention those other things we've been setting our eyes on.  And, as for that little baby born in Bethlehem, well, we'll just give Him a nod every now and then, right? Dead wrong, in my opinion.  The Baby who became a man to suffer and die for us should be preeminent in our celebrations, and as for Santa or Father Christmas, they should be done away with, unless we're about five or six years old.  Oh well, the department store managers wouldn't like what I just said, but what do they know?

We have another short story for you today which I hope you will enjoy.  It's entitled "Mystery of the Missing Key" by May Smith and is rendered as follows:

A blizzard on Christmas Eve might have been nice, but not while I was cooped up in an unheated trailer in the middle of a windy church parking lot.  "Let's sing carols," I said.  "That'll warm us up." Just as I'd done for the past six years, I was helping distribute winter clothes to needy families.  My friend Mary Jones and her mom, Thora Kelly, worked with me that night.  Over the past week we'd given away nearly 500 coats and hats, as well as stuffed animals and candy canes for the kids.  We were happy to do the work, in spite of the cold.  "O come all ye faithful," we sang.  The faithful had come to us that night.  Almost all the clothes were gone.

I glanced outside.  It was late, and the parking lot was empty.  "Let's close up," I said.  Mary and her mom agreed.  We were eager to go home to our own familiars.  We took one final look around, and I reached for the key that always hung on the hook by the door.  It wasn't there.  "Hey, did anybody take the key off the hook?" I asked.

We looked everywhere, retracing our steps.  What a bother.  What a waste of time.  Where could the key possibly have gone? God, why do I have to be stuck here late on Christmas Eve?

"It's always on that hook," Mary said.  "It didn't just get up and walk away." Just then we heard a loud chugging noise in the parking lot.  The three of us looked outside.  A dilapidated van shuddered to a stop.  The doors slid open and out stepped a very pregnant woman and three small children.  They were hunched over, hugging themselves.  None of them were wearing coats.

"Come in." I called, holding open the door.  We all reached for the little family at once, pulling them into the trailer.  There was no heat, but at least they would be sheltered from the blizzard.

We searched for things for the children--coats, fuzzy socks, and stuffed animals.  "My husband lost his job," the woman told us.  "Then we lost our home and everything in it." A church family had taken them in for now.

The woman shivered.  We couldn't find anything big enough to cover her huge belly.  "Try this," I said at last, dragging a woolen coat from the rack.  She squeezed into it.  "Hold your breath!" I said.  We had to laugh.  No way could we button that coat! But it was better than nothing.

"Tomorrow I'll take you to the food pantry," Mary said.  "I bet we can find emergency housing, too," I added.  The mother looked down at her children, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.

The family climbed into their van.  The three of us stood in the snow, watching them chug away.  Somehow I knew we were thinking the same thing.  We were reminded of another young woman looking for shelter so many years ago.  A woman who had to settle for a stable to give birth to her son.

"What if we'd left a moment sooner?" Mary asked.  We hugged each other and went back inside to continue our search for the key.  We didn't have to look far.  It was hanging on the hook by the door where we'd always kept it.  On Christmas Eve, angels work overtime, too.

And there you have May's article which I hope was a blessing to you.

And now may the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob just keep us safe, individually and collectively, in these last days in which we live.  Your Christian friend and brother, Paul