A Christmas reunion.
A church’s Christmas tapestry, covering a plaster problem, unexpectedly reunited a man with his wife after decades of separation. The tapestry, a gift from the wife to her minister husband before their internment in concentration camps, brought them back together on Christmas Eve.
The ultimate Christmas reunion. This is message 556 and day 23 in the New Year Resolution Challenge and this message is dedicated to Dr. Rob Gilbert because today’s message is my favorite Christmas story he tells. (Godspeed Dr. Gilbert reading the 240 essays before the 30th and getting the grades turned in.)
Many, many years ago at a church in Brookline, Massachusetts. A few days before Christmas, for some reason, some of the plaster started falling off the wall, and it was an eyesore. And the minister and his wife tried to figure out what to do. And then the wife remembered that there was this huge tapestry that was still in the basement from when they arrived. Well, they took the tapestry out, and it was the perfect solution to their problem.
The night before Christmas Eve, the minister and his wife got up on these tall ladders and started nailing the tapestry to the wall covering the eyesore. And while they were doing that, an old woman walked into the church, and she excused herself because she missed the bus and it was freezing out. But while she was watching, she walked towards the front and asked the minister if a name was stitched into the lower right hand corner. And the minister looked and said, yes, the name Maria is in red thread. The woman started crying. She said, I made that tapestry for my husband, who was a minister just like you. But we were living in Austria, and the Nazis took him away to a concentration camp and killed him. And the minister and his wife were so heartbroken that they drove the old lady home and they invited her to Christmas Eve service the next day.
But Maria did not come. At the end of the Christmas Eve service, the minister and his wife greeted everyone on the way out of church. And when they walked into the front of the church, they saw an old man sitting in the front row staring at the tapestry. And he said, excuse me, minister, my eyes are failing me. Could you tell me if there is a name stitched in the lower right hand corner of that tapestry? And the minister said, yes, sir, the name is Maria. And the man started crying. And he said, my wife gave that to me before they took me and her to the concentration camps. And I know that they killed her. And the minister and his wife started sobbing, too. And they said, sir, we have to visit one of our congregants who doesn't live far from here. Would you mind taking a Christmas Eve drive with us? And the man stood up. He said, well, I have nothing better to do. And the minister and his wife witnessed the greatest reunion in the history of the world. Merry Christmas.