She’d turned it over in her mind for months. She was allowed to give one gift. Cost was no object, but it was the only gift she would be allowed to give ever again. Just one gift.

She’d gotten the message in her mailbox on a sweltering August day. The envelope was sealed with gold leaf and the writing was in excellent calligraphy. Choose a gift for the letter writer’s choice of recipient. She might never know who, might never meet the person, but would know he received the gift. At first, she’d dismissed it as someone’s effort to amuse himself. Maybe it was some sort of game show, and she was the only one not in on the joke. Why her? Why had she been singled out? She wasn’t anyone special. But as the days cooled and no other message arrived, she began to consider the project. If this was a real offer – responsibility, really – she shouldn’t pass on it. One gift. Any amount of money could be spent and would be made available as required.

Money no object? She could dismiss the usual gifts of clothing or nearly anything else found in the mall. Technology? Now there was an idea. A person could do things with the newest gadget. But technology was always changing. Who would want something that would be obsolete within a year or two? Ditto for vehicles of all kinds.

She didn’t dismiss books as readily as someone else might. A book – the right book – could elevate thinking. Why, it could change a life if a person took the author’s premise to heart. Maybe she could give a first edition. Hmm.

Real estate was a great alternative. You can’t go wrong with real estate despite market trends, because that was just it. If the price fell, it could as easily rise after enough time. A house? Maybe an estate. What was she thinking?! She could buy an entire island. Who wouldn’t want their own private island? No one she could think of.

She could arrange for tuition and room and board at a university. Of course, not knowing the recipient, she couldn’t be certain such a thing would be appreciated nor even useful.

Or a vacation somewhere! Really. Didn’t everyone need, or, at least, want a vacation? France, Greece, Paris in the spring . . .

She supposed she could buy stock. Didn’t rich people do that type of thing? Stock could make someone a millionaire. Or not.

Days and weeks passed. She researched. She wandered around the neighborhood wondering about the letter-writer and then thinking about the gift recipient. Leaves changed color and fell. Icy weather settled in. She sipped cocoa and looked out the window, thinking. Wondering. Turning it over in her mind. One gift. Only one and then, never again.

And it was Christmas Eve, the date given to reveal her choice. Despite the crunchy snow underfoot, she walked to the mailbox and deposited her choice within. It was a small manila envelope with two 2-inch symbols and a letter inside. It read:

Dear Gift Recipient:

I’ve spent a lot of time – make that an enormous amount of time – wondering what to give you. I finally concluded that, of all the things available the world over, my choice is the best one. It’s small and great at the same time.

I hope you like it. I hope you will accept it.

Cost: Me – nothing. Him – everything. You – pending.

 

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Snow fell outside as winter’s cold touch frosted the pane of glass next to her. She wrapped her hands more tightly around her coffee cup as she sipped and peered into the velvety dark of an empty street. Other than the cook and a waitress, she was alone in the all-night diner. She wished she wasn’t, but she was. Her mind drifted back to another night just like this one. Just like this one it had been close to midnight on Christmas Eve.

She’d been on top of the world then. After three years of hard work and loneliness, she’d been offered a promotion in an exciting city away from this bland town and she’d accepted it. Her things had been moved and she had just finished up final details on a day when everyone else was home or at church celebrating. She’d passed the little diner and decided to stop for a hot cup of coffee to warm her fingers, for though future’s promise held some light, the night was bitterly cold.

Her fingers had just begun to thaw when he walked in and cheerfulness suddenly filled the room, touching everyone including her. He hailed the cook and the cook waved back with his spatula. He got the waitress talking, and marveled at her two children’s accomplishments. He told a joke and the two workmen at the counter joked back, laughing.

As he was served his bacon and eggs, their eyes met; and he’d motioned her to join him. And in two hours that felt both like a lifetime and no time at all, she learned he was leaving – as she was – in the morning. Yet it wasn’t for an exciting city, but a dusty country where he would fight for someone else’s freedom and, perhaps, for a freedom she daily took for granted. And they had agreed that night, that, barring other relationships or death, they would meet here again in five years to the minute.

Those five years had been good. She’d met with success. She’d made some friends, friendly acquaintances really. But a life filled with trivial things holds little satisfaction, and she’d learned that, like everyone else, she was not without a yearning to go below surface amusements.

Oh, she’d made an effort to find him. She’d tracked his name down every possible avenue, but had come up empty. Maybe she’d been had. His easy manner invited trust, but perhaps it was a ruse. She’d chided herself, but she couldn’t forget that night five years ago nor their easy conversation nor the depth of his gray-green eyes nor the way his left eye squinted when he smiled. Nor their promise.

And here she was. Little had changed in this old town, but somehow it pulled her back. She’d even come a few days early and curiously perused real estate listings.

The dark night whispered doubt and tragedy. Minus the occasional clatter of dishes, it was too quiet. She had been foolish to think about it at all. She should have left it, as he most certainly had, in the booth as she walked out the door. She should have left the memory. She should have forgotten the promise.

She squinted again into the darkness, then down into her steaming coffee. She closed her eyes and held the cup to her cheek. Please. Life had to hold more than what she’d experienced. Please, on this night when all the world somehow knew hope was real and love wasn’t just for the fortunate, let him remember. Let him care. Let him come.

The bell on the door jingled. She opened her eyes and they met his: gray and green and deep as the sea.

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It had been howling for, oh, two hours straight. The wind that had begun as a hesitant breeze had grown swiftly to unrelenting gusts. Hard pellets of icy snow filled the air, swirling and crashing on streets and cars and homes. No one in their right mind would be out in this weather. And no one in their right mind was.

“Jiffy!” His words were snatched by the wind and tossed into a sea of soundless air. Still, he persisted.

“Jiffy! Jiff, please! I’m here. Follow my voice!”

How had it even come to this? He’d been a slug for days on end after. That’s how he’d begun to think of it. After. After he’d lost his job due to cuts because of one more regulation the small company just couldn’t afford. After he’d discovered his girlfriend had been seeing another man on the side. Well, that was that. As they say, once trust is gone, what else is there? After he’d had to move from his apartment to a much smaller, less expensive place in another part of town.

The ‘after’ part of his life hadn’t been long – just the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas – but it had been brutal. The road ahead was dark and hopeless, the girl he’d once considered his best friend – wasn’t, and despite knowing it would just make things worse, he’d begun to allow himself to sink into the despair that knocked incessantly at his door.

The one thing that had kept him from crawling under the covers and checking out completely was his dog, Jiffy. He’d rescued Jiffy from the pound at a bargain price the day before he was scheduled to be put down. They were as close as it was possible for man and dog to be. When he went anywhere, Jiffy was right beside him. They ran together every morning and every evening. Before. Yet even when he’d begun his long slide, Jiffy hadn’t deserted him. He’d nudged him out of bed, snuggled next to him with camaraderie’s warmth, and made him keep going somehow.

And now, on a lonely Christmas Eve night, his one loyal friend was lost during a walk around a block of the new part of town; an impulse that, like everything else in his life of late, had gone horribly wrong.

Wasn’t Christmas, if not a time of joy and gladness or lights and presents, at least a time of hope?

He sank to his knees and the snow seeped through his jeans with its numbing cold.

“Jiiiiffyyy! Ji . . .”

He covered his face with his hands. There was no light for him. No joy. No warmth.

Something made him look up: A sound; small, but real, and getting louder. It was a sound he knew by heart. By heart.

And his dog jumped up on him and licked him over and over, and he wrapped his arms around his wriggling, wet, cold, snowy, wonderful friend and kissed him back.

After. After they’d gotten back to his apartment, after he’d rubbed Jiffy down with a thirsty towel, after he’d changed into warm, dry clothes, after he’d grilled a steak to split between the two of them, and after he’d turned on some Christmas music, he and Jiffy sat close together and watched the busy snow against a dark sky. He didn’t have a tree this year. There were no lights. Yet something he’d missed began rising up inside him.

And he and Jiffy celebrated like there was no tomorrow. But there was.

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Don’t read this Christmas miracle story. You won’t like it, and you won’t like me for writing it. Save yourself the stress, skip this story, and come back next week for something to give you the sense of warmth and Christmas joy we all love; unless, of course, you don’t mind the fact that sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

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Semi-surrounded as it was by three oceans, the dear little country seemed to be encircled with the shelter of angel’s wings. It’s founders had, in fact, asked for wisdom from heaven, itself, in its structure, and for many years it seemed to be blessed because of it. Sure, it had its ups and downs. Every country swings between the forces of good and evil with the pendulum of history. It praised its heroes. It mourned its defeats. It witnessed its share of error as well as of greatness in the comings and goings of all that happens through the course of time’s river.

But of late the country had been badly beaten and bruised. Its recent rulers had done what damage they could by pitting its citizens against each other (skin, sex, culture, religion, language, you name it), by reducing its protections – both of individuals and as a whole, by abusing its sense of morality and common sense, by denigrating the church and even the country, itself, and by putting a stranglehold on those who attempted to use their nerve and smarts to make a go of it. The rulers held out the apple of benevolence injected with the poison of increased governmental control, and the people ate it.

How did it happen? It wasn’t as though its citizens were desiring their own country’s demise. They were, for the most part, very good people: People who loved what was right, or thought they did; who cared about their fellow-man; who honestly wanted good to prevail. But schools of thought differed about how to best help people and preserve a nation. Passions inflamed. Those who would use those passions to create destruction rather than discourse were loud and persistent. The gem of youth was accessed. Slowly and surely young children grew to believe things they were taught about history, economy, and morality regardless of the lessons’ veracity. They were young. They didn’t know differently, their teachers were both sincere and skillful, and their parents were oblivious of the intensity of indoctrination. The very definition of words was changed to influence thinking about right and wrong, good and evil. It became difficult to tell what was true and what was false, and voices from many sources created a cacophony of confusion.

For belief, as we all know, is a stubborn thing. It is strong and rarely yields. Why should it? The question, of course, is which belief is right? Which belief is true?

And now the country’s demise was nearly complete. In only a short time, its transformation from freedom to communism would take place. The powers and their followers were nearly ecstatic with the thought. And the people? Half of them were alarmed at the thought and half of them were at peace with it.

In just one election, it would be entirely possible to wrest what control a free citizenry maintained and implement their own philosophy: Marxism leading to socialism leading to communism. It was, according to everyone who knew anything, a sure thing.

But prayer can’t be outlawed, even when thought seemingly is controlled and speech surely is – if not by law, then by name-calling. Small utterances in quiet homes and loud pleas in large gatherings were offered to the God who had watched, as He watches all countries, with care and concern, and suddenly the little country found reason to hope.

That hope came, as hope often does, in an unexpected way. A blustery man of no political background challenged the plans so carefully laid. His language wasn’t skilled nor did it hold the smooth enticement of a politician, but he was brave and he was tenacious, whatever else people thought of him. Some said he thought one thing, some said he thought another. And said. And did. And his character was this. Or that. His election caused some to fear. They worried about the opinions others claimed he held and were concerned for the future. Some people rejoiced at the thought of the country being snatched from the precipice of Marxist policy and of the possibility of it returning to its origins; not the origins taught by the sincere and skillful teachers, but its true Constitutional origins that people needed to learn about; some, for the first time. And some people felt uncertain about who they should believe, sighing while they continued in their daily tasks.

And the country watched and waited to see what the blustery man of no political background would do. And as they waited, God watched them.

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