By John Paladini ~

There is nothing especially spiritual about a Home Depot gift card. But on a recent trip to my favorite store, I learned a great spiritual lesson. I watched dozens of tradesmen, contractors and craftsmen enter the store empty handed, and emerge a little while later with their carts stacked full of tools and supplies. It dawned on me that you can only do works of service when you’re fully equipped, and God wants to supply all our needs. Those artisans, not only had the materials they needed, but I could see that they had a plan in mind. Many of them were already “building” their projects as they headed for their truck. That’s a gift from God. I just love it when a plan comes together!

“And He Himself gave some …gifts… for the equipping of the saints for the work of ministry, for the edifying of the body of Christ.”  Ephesians 4:11-12

John has contributed previous articles to Paladini Potpie. If you enjoyed this post you might want to check out   “Scaffolding” and “Defying Gravity on the Erie Canal”  He also has his own blog where he writes articles to encourage and build up marriages. You can read his posts and sign up to receive them on MarriageFeast.org

Today I’m posting a sad, victorious, and thought-provoking article by my good friend Emily Cotton. Emily is a historical fiction writer, and sometimes blogger.  Watch for the release of her upcoming book, Barbarossa’s Barb.  And in the meantime you can read her posts on Cotton Unraveled, and visit her on Facebook

I’m grateful for Christmas.
December 1961 was my Christmas without Santa Claus. I was eight years old, and my youngest brother was in the hospital dying of leukemia. He was the second brother I had lost to that dreaded disease and so I had no hope that he would come home again.

My parents spent most of their time with him. The usual pre-Christmas round of buying gifts with our hoarded allowances was hurried and subdued; the Christmas lights never went up, and the decorations looked like the efforts of four kids aged 4 to 11, with the occasional oversight of a distant older brother home from college break.

It’s not that I ever believed in Santa. We never had a fireplace, and I wasn’t dumb enough to think reindeer could fly. Besides, being an extremely literal family who didn’t go in for religious nonsense, all us kids knew that nobody could cover the globe in one night, let alone give every person their just deserts for a year’s behavior. But since the whole culture did the story, like the Easter bunny or the tooth fairy, we joined in singing ‘Up on the rooftop, reindeer pause; down comes good old Santa Claus!” (Except I always thought it was ‘reindeer paws’ and thought the lyricist should have known that all deer have hooves.) I never liked the Santa-themed carols much. They sounded stupid.

Not so the traditional carols. The ageless tunes spoke to my starving soul, and the words even more: Peace on Earth, Goodwill to men! Joy to the world, the Lord is come!
I learned every verse of every carol, even to the last stanzas, the ones rarely sung. “Sorrowing, sighing, bleeding, dying, sealed in the stone-cold tomb.”

I thought that if you were going to dwell on a fantasy, the God one beat Santa all hollow. Wouldn’t it be amazingly wonderful if there really were a Creator of the universe, of me and of my sick little brother, who actually, personally cared about us? If he really became like us, starting as a helpless infant, conceived under the shadow of bastardy, to be teased and rejected by the other children? If he really were born to an unwelcomed homeless couple sheltering in somebody’s cattle-shed, in a backwards conquered country under the heel of a totalitarian empire? If, despite all that evil could throw against him (and evil can throw a lot against a child on the bottom) he really lived through all that without once giving back wrong for wrong?

Wouldn’t it be amazingly wonderful if, because of that god-man’s sacrifice on our behalf, all our own wrongs would be erased, and there would be no more death?

Little Paul Harlan left us on Christmas Eve. My parents were anti-religious, so there was no church or temple or synagogue or mosque to help our family cope. No funeral. No neighbors bringing food, and none of the comfort Good Religion provides the bereaved. Over the next five years, while our family fell apart, I saw that my parents’ godless philosophy only worked in fair weather. It didn’t hold up to the storms.

That sad holiday was the beginning of my investigation into what works. With my limited knowledge, and a skeptical, cynical, materialist viewpoint, I started a groping search for the answer to pain and death and disease and evil. I had one tool at my disposal: I had history. And even a child could see that all of history bent around the short life of the man named Jesus of Nazareth.

It took me another 12 years to realize that he still lived, and that he wanted me. Hot-tempered, self-centered, loud, impulsive, negligent, buck-toothed, unpopular, trouble-on-the-hoof me. With infinite patience Jesus poked and prodded, lured and wooed, until at last I was desperate enough to hear his call: “Come. Rest. Give me your burdens. Take me as yoke-fellow; I’ll do the heaviest part, and if you watch me and listen, you’ll learn the commands too. Help me pull this planet in the right direction, for I have work perfectly suited to your abilities and passions. And don’t grieve, because your brothers are here in my keeping. You’ll see them again.”

I’ve proved him for 40 years now. He’s kept his promises, and I trust he will keep them forever.

“For lo! The days are hast’ning on, by prophets seen of old, ‘till with the ever circling years shall come the time foretold. When heaven and earth shall acknowledge the Prince of Peace their king, and the whole world give back the song that now the angels sing.”

The sail of my windsurfer went suddenly slack, and my board slowed nearly to a stop. I was adrift more than half a mile from shore. That’s when I noticed the unmistakable sleek form of a shark following close behind me.

They say your life flashes before your eyes in moments like this, but all I could see was that it was gaining speed and rising rapidly below me.

Riding a windsurfer is like riding a bicycle. Once you learn to ride one, you never forget. But learning to ride the waves involves hours of practice and dozens – even hundreds – of falls, and the perseverance to get back on and try again. The hazards, however, are different. No scraped knees or broken arms thankfully. But drowning is a real possibility if you ride without a life jacket like we did in those days. And then there are other dangers; the perils of the deep, and creatures that lurk in dark waters.

“I’m your favorite senior citizen” a robust, athletic Deet Eichel would say, putting on the feeblest voice he could muster. The ranger at the gate would wave us through because seniors get in free. A couple of times a week Deet would swing by the cabinet shop to pick us up, windsurfers strapped to the top of the car.  In thirty minutes we’d be gliding across the water, our sails full of wind.

John wind surfing at Modesto Reservoir (circa 1978)

Like sailing, windsurfing is a peaceful solitary sport. There are no motors and no noise, only the sound of your board rippling across the top of the water. Maybe now and then a “WooHoo!” from one of your partners. It requires strength and stamina and, oh yes, wind. It is not uncommon to find yourself alone in the center of a huge body of water far from shore with no one in sight. And that‘s exactly where I was when the wind died.

Balancing on a windsurfer without any wind is like riding a bicycle at zero miles per hour. I’ve seen Lance Armstrong stay upright on a fully stopped bicycle, but then, he’s a professional. I was beginning to lose my balance, and was about to drop into the water when I saw it. My mind began to race, and the hair stood up on the back of my neck. It was at least six feet long. “What kind of giant fish live in fresh water? Sturgeon…Shark? There was no mistaking the fact that it was getting closer. I began to see long green tendrils protruding from the top of it as bright sunlight illuminated the ground around it.

Then I realized…the tendrils were grass, and my “shark” was the shadow of my windsurfer! I hopped off the board, laughing. I stood on solid ground in three feet of water in the very center of the lake. It was an underwater hill with grass growing on it that would be an island when the water level dropped a few feet. But for now it was one of those uncanny things that turn a regular day of windsurfing into an adventure on the high seas.

(Thanks to my husband, John Paladini, for sharing this story.)