A small, happy miracle
Nearly Christmas and Bill was dying of cancer. His wife, Joyce, visited him every day in hospital and never ceased to rail about the injustice of God for ignoring her daily prayers for his recovery. “Your God is no ... good,” she snarled at their visiting minister, who simply smiled and asked about the lovely ceramic Christmas tree sitting on Bill’s locker, miniature lights shining on every branch.
“A friend brought it,” she grudgingly told the minister. “Bill loves it. He looks at it all the time.”
The next day was Christmas Eve and again the minister dropped in to visit, but this time it was to find Bill asleep and Joyce sitting muttering, her face a mask of fury. The Christmas tree was missing. “Where’s … ?” he asked. Joyce pointed to a black plastic bag under the bed.
“Stupid nurse tripped on the cord and smashed it,” she rasped.
When the minister got home that evening, he found his wife and three young sons making the last preparations for the big day to come.
“Look at this,” he said, and dumped the plastic bag on the table, opened it and revealed the myriad pieces of the broken Christmas tree. “Think we can put it together again for Bill?”
The boys went to their rooms and came back with an assortment of glue pots and paste, plastacine, crayons and water, oil and acrylic paints. By 9 p.m., the pieces were spread on the dining-room table and five people were busy sorting them, fitting them together, gluing and colouring. It was a slow and meticulous business, but four hours later, long past the boys’ bed times, the tree was fully reconstructed. With anticipation, they plugged it in and lo and behold all the little lights shone and the mended scars hardly showed.
On Christmas Day, the minister got up early and drove to the hospital. Having ascertained that Bill was asleep, he crept into his room and set the repaired Christmas tree on the bedside locker, taped the electric cord to the floor, plugged it in, turned it on and left.
No spectacular magic, just God using his people to create a small happy miracle.
Margaret Whitford Parksville