Inspirational snippets: A miracle reunion

A couple set out to reopen a church in suburban Brooklyn, but the building was very run down. They set a goal to repair it in time for their first service on Christmas Eve and worked hard to repair pews, walls and the floors. They were ahead of schedule and almost done, when a two-day storm caused the roof to leak, causing a large area of plaster to fall off the front wall of the sanctuary just behind the pulpit.

The pastor cleaned up the mess and headed home. On the way he saw a local business was having a sale, so he stopped in and found a beautiful, crocheted tablecloth with exquisite workmanship, fine colors and a Cross embroidered right in the center. It was just the right size to cover the hole in the front wall.

He bought it and headed back to the church, but on the way he bumped into an older woman who was trying to catch a bus. She missed the bus, so 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 put up the tablecloth as a wall tapestry. Then the woman 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. They were the initials she put there when she made the tablecloth 35 years before, in Austria.

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, but was captured, sent to prison and never seen again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth, but she made him keep it for the church. He then insisted on driving her home to the other side of Staten Island.

The church was almost full on Christmas Eve. At the end of the service, an old man from the neighborhood continued to sit in one of the pews. The pastor wondered why he wasn't leaving. The man asked him where he got the tablecloth, which was identical to one that his wife had made years ago when they lived in Austria before the war. He told the pastor how he forced his wife to flee from the Nazis only to be arrested. He never saw his wife or his home again all the 35 years 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.

Indeed God works in wonderful ways. True Story - submitted by Pastor Rob Reid.