Even if this isn't true as it is said to be, I thought it was a very touching story.
The Table Cloth - a beautiful story !
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
earlier, 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 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
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 he saw the greatest Christmas reunion he could ever imagine.
A True Story - from Pastor Rob Reid