The
Greatest Christmas Reunion
The story
is true according to Pastor
Rob Reid
The
brand new pastor and his wife had been
assigned to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn.
They arrived in early
October and excited about their opportunities.
When
they saw their church, it was in poor condition 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 ahead of schedule and just about finished.
However on
Dec 19 a terrible tempest 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 2 feet
by 8 feet to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the
pulpit. The
pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor, and not knowing what else to
do and
he 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.
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
many 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 to keep
it for the church. Then the pastor
insisted on driving her home instead
of waiting for bus.
She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn
for the day for a housecleaning job.
On
Christmas Eve, the
church was almost full. At the end of the service, the pastor and his
wife greeted everyone. 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 the one
that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the
war. How
could there be two tablecloths so much alike? He later
told
the pastor how the Nazis came and how
he forced his wife to flee for her safety. He
was supposed to follow her, but he was arrested and put in a prison. He
never saw his wife or his home again.
And
then 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 stairs
to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door and he saw the greatest
Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.