Magyar Egyház, 2003 (82. évfolyam, 1-3. szám)
2003-10-01 / 3. szám
MAGYAR EGYHÁZ 5. oldal to my meager wage. The tires on the old Chevy had the consistency of penny balloons and began to leak. I had to fill them with air on the way to work and again every morning before I could go home. One bleak fall morning, I dragged myself to the car to go home and found four tires in the back seat. New tires! There was no note, no nothing, just those beautiful brand new tires. Had angels taken up residence in Indiana? I wondered. I made a deal with the local service station. In exchange for his mounting the new tires, I would clean up his office. I remember it took me a lot longer to scrub his floor than it did for him to do the tires. I was now working six nights instead of five and it still wasn't enough. Christmas was coming and I knew there would be no money for toys for the kids. I found a can of red paint and started repairing and painting some old toys. Then I hid them in the basement so there would be something for Santa to deliver on Christmas morning. Clothes were a worry too. I was sewing patches on top of patches on the boys pants and soon they would be too far gone to repair. On Christmas Eve the usual customers were drinking coffee in the Big Wheel. These were the truckers, Les, Frank, and Jim, and a state trooper named Joe. A few musicians were hanging around after a gig at the Legion and were dropping nickels in the pinball machine. The regulars all just sat around and talked through the wee hours of the morning and then left to get home before the sun came up. When it was time for me to go home at seven o'clock on Christmas morning I hurried to the car. I was hoping the kids wouldn't wake up before I managed to get home and get the presents from the basement and place them under the tree. (We had cut down a small cedar tree by the side of the road down by the dump.) It was still dark and I couldn't see much, but there appeared to be some dark shadows in the car-or was that just a trick of the night? Something certainly looked different, but it was hard to tell what. When I reached the car I peered warily into one of the side windows. Then my jaw dropped in amazement. My old battered Chevy was filled full to the top with boxes of all shapes and sizes. I quickly opened the driver's side door, scrambled inside and kneeled in the front facing the back seat. Reaching back, I pulled off the lid of the top box. Inside was whole case of little blue jeans, sizes 2-10 ! I looked inside another box: It was full of shirts to go with the jeans. Then I peeked inside some of the other boxes: There was candy and nuts and bananas and bags of groceries. There was an enormous ham for baking, and canned vegetables and potatoes. There was pudding and Jell-0 and cookies, pie filling and flour. There was a whole bag of laundry supplies and cleaning items. And there were five toy trucks and one beautiful little doll. As I drove back through empty streets as the sun slowly rose on most amazing Christmas Day of my life, I was sobbing with gratitude. And I will never forget the joy on the faces of my little ones that precious morning. Yes, there were angels in Indiana that long-ago December. And they all hung out at the Big Wheel truck stop. ”She wrapped Him in swaddling clothes. ” (Luke 2:7.) The day was frightfully cold, with swirls of snow in the air, and I was looking out the living room window which faces our Church. Workmen had just finished constructing the annual Nativity scene in the churchyard when school let out for the day. Children gathered excitedly around the creche, but they didn’t stay long; it was far too cold for lingering. All the children hurried away— except for a tiny girl of about six. The wind lashed at her bare legs and caused her coat to fly open in the front, but she was oblivious of the weather. All her attention was riveted on the statues before her. Which one I couldn’t tell. Was it Mary ? The Baby ? The animals ? I wondered ! And then I saw her remove her blue woolen head scarf. The wind quickly knotted her hair into a wild tangle, but she didn’t seem to notice that either. She had only one thought. Lovingly, she wrapped her scarf around the statue of the BabyJesus. After she had covered it, she patted the Baby and then kissed it on the cheek. Satisfied, she skipped on down the street, her hair frosted with tiny diamonds of ice. Christmas had come once again ! ^€xxnu’y ta ceteAiale/ Church growth reserchers indicate that the vast majority of people (75-90%) who come to a church for the first time do so because someone, such as a friend or family member, has asked them to come. And what’s more, Christmas Eve is the number one opportunity for inviting unaffiliated people to come to church. God did not wait for the shepherds to read about Jesus’ birth in the newspaper, and God did not wait for the shepherds to randomly pass by the manger and stumble upon Jesus by chance. No, God invited the shepherds to attend the first Christmas celebration, and they responded. Who are the shepherds around us who are waiting to be invited to hear the good news of Christmas ?
