Tuesday, February 9, 2016
VIDEO
Therefore, whenever we have the opportunity, we should do good to
everyone—especially to those in the family of faith. Galatians 6:10(NLT)
Before
we leave the warmth of Christmas joy for the sobering Lenten season, I would
like to pass along one more uplifting moment of celebration I recently received
from John Mehrling, a friend, and part of our extended family. John writes of something that happened years
ago on our (then) home of Long Island:
The promised warm weather for Christmas Day reminded me of a
Christmas shortly after Anne and I were married. We were living in Queens
and sang in the choir of a local Lutheran Church. We would slip out just
before the end of the Midnight Christmas Eve Service to catch the Jamaica Ave [elevated
train] out to the LIRR Jamaica Station for the last train out to Stony Brook.
Well that night, because of the very warm weather, we were
shrouded in dense fog. [We] almost missed the el train because we didn't
see it entering the station.
At Jamaica we got on a train made up of very old, un-reconditioned
cars - dim lights, low backed seats, heat on (the book said it was winter and
the heat should be on). The car was mostly filled with men who had
combined shopping for last minute gifts for their children with overly
enthusiastic liquid celebrating. Many of them were loudly bragging of all
they were going to do before the kids got up to see what Santa was leaving
them.
Then our train hit a car in Mineola, delaying us for a while
before we resumed our trip.
Anne and I were sort of aware of a young soldier sitting
behind us. After the train resumed its eastward journey, he asked the
gentleman sitting next to him if he thought there would still be a taxi at the
Northport Station. Slowly the young man told his story - he was returning
from Viet Nam. He had a gift for his mother in his second duffel bag -
she never had a good set of dishes and he bought her a set while on R&R in
Hong Kong.
The man next to him asked why his folks wouldn't be meeting
him and he told him that they didn't know he was coming home - he had been
released and stuffed onto an outbound plane at the last minute; similar timing
had occurred at each connecting point along the way. He was very
concerned that he get the gift for his mother home intact. (I'm thinking
that his mother wouldn't so much care for the gift as for his safe, unexpected
return.) Then the man sitting next to him told him, "Get off with me
at Huntington, I'll drive you home."
Amid all the self-important sleaze in the dimly lit car, the
light of God's love shone brightly on that early Christmas Day morning.
Sometimes
the unselfishness of a stranger is all it takes to make your season, or
year. The more I thought about John’s
story and how that young man received kindness in his journey, the more my mind
began to draw opposite pictures of another Son who was treated badly in his
journey to planet earth.
This
story reminds us that Christmas is entirely in the hands of those for whom the
Son of God left his heavenly home and brought his life-giving gift.
For You Today
There’s every possibility that today you might meet someone
in need of that little extra kindness God has prepared inside you.
[1] Title image: By Mikhail (Vokabre) Shcherbakov from
Moscow, Russia (Old passenger train), via Wikimedia
Commons
