The Tablecloth
- The brand new pastor and
his wife, newly assigned to their first ministry, to reopen a church in urban 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 sunk when
he saw that the roof had leaked, causing a large area of plaster about 6 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 table cloth 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 some 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; it 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 housecleaning 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 concentration camp. He never saw his wife or
his home again for 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 he saw the greatest Christmas
reunion he could ever imagine.
-
- True Story-submitted by
Pastor Rob Reid
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