THE TABLE CLOTH

This is a Christmas story.....  Valentine's Day reminds me  of Christmas. It's all about love, Jesus' birth is about love come down.....He is our Valentine. HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY DEAR ONES!!                                  The Table Cloth The brand new pastor and his wife, newly  assigned to their first ministry, to reopen  a church in suburban Brooklyn, arrived in  early October excited about their opportunities.  When they saw their church, it was very run down  and needed much work. They set a goal to have  everything done in time to have their first service  on Christmas Eve. They worked hard, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, etc. and on Dec 18 were ahead of schedule  and just about finished. On Dec 19 a terrible tempest  - a driving rainstorm - hit the area and lasted for two  days. On the 21st, the pastor went over to the  church. His heart sank when he saw that the roof  had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about  20 feet by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the  sanctuary just behind the pulpit, beginning about  head high. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the  floor, and not knowing what else to do but postpone  the Christmas Eve service, headed home.  On the way he noticed that a local business was having  a flea market type sale for charity so he stopped in.  One of the items was a beautiful, handmade,ivory  colored, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite work,  fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center.  It was just the right size to cover up the hole in the  front wall. He bought it and headed back to the church. By this time it had started to snow. An older woman  running from the opposite direction was trying to catch  the bus. She missed it. The pastor invited her to wait in  the warm church for the next bus 45 minutes later.  She sat in a pew and paid no attention to the pastor  while he got a ladder, hangers, etc., to put up the  tablecloth as a wall tapestry. The pastor could hardly  believe how beautiful it looked and it covered up the  entire problem area. Then he noticed the woman  walking down the center aisle. Her face was like  a sheet. "Pastor," she asked, "where did you get that tablecloth?"   The pastor explained. The woman asked him to check  the lower right corner to see if the initials, EBG were  crocheted into it there. They were. These were the  initials of the woman, and she had made this tablecloth  35 years before, in Austria.  The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor told  how he had just gotten the tablecloth. The woman  explained that before the war she and her husband  were well-to-do people in Austria. When the Nazis came, she was forced to leave. Her husband was going to follow  her the next week. She was captured, sent to prison and  never saw her husband or her home again. The pastor  wanted to give her the tablecloth; but she made the pastor  keep it for the church. The pastor insisted on driving her  home, that was the least he could do. She lived on the other  side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn for the day  for a house-cleaning job. What a wonderful service they had on Christmas Eve.  The church was almost full. The music and the spirit were  great. At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife  greeted everyone at the door and many said that they  would return. One older man, whom the pastor recognized  from the neighborhood, continued to sit in one of the pews  and stare, and the pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving.  The man asked him where he got the tablecloth on the front  wall because it was identical to one that his wife had made   years ago when they lived in Austria before the war and  how could there be two tablecloths so much alike?  He told the pastor how the Nazis came, how he forced  his wife to flee for her safety, and he was supposed to  follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison.  He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35  years in between. The pastor asked him if he would allow him to take him for a little ride. They drove to Staten Island and to the same house where the pastor had taken the woman three days earlier. He helped the man climb the three flights of stairs to the  woman's apartment, knocked on the door and there  he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever  imagine and was blessed with the  ultimate Christmas gift. Isn't that a beautiful story about love?   Coming up next week is something very big.  I'm doing something a bit different on my blog, an interview with a woman who suffers  from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. She has written a book about her experiences that  we will also be discussing. Please watch for announcements for it and come by to visit while I'm interviewing Leslie Raddatz. The  interview will be in five chapters....five days. Hugs to all my Valentines, Barb