Yesterday when redirecting my travel on a remote country road, I happened to turn around in the dirt driveway of a droopy-looking little homestead.
A few abandoned, well-rusted truck bodies sat in the yard as well as a presumably operative, if antiquated, automobile. A gray mobile home, patched with panels of corrugated metal, resembled a wrinkly, vagrant elephant that had finally collapsed by the edge of the nearby forest, too weary to go any further.
There was no sign of life anywhere. No light in a window. No footprints in the mud.
As I pulled in and prepared to back around, I stepped on the brake momentarily, struck by a touch of Christmas. In the midst of obvious drabness, a cheap red metallic wreath stood on the door as a holiday icon.
It looked strangely out-of-place: a sentinel of hope standing watch over an outpost of despair. I had to wonder at the heart and hands responsible for its placement there, a glimmer in the drabness. Did the owner know how similarly the incarnate Christ shone in a desperate world on the first Christmas, and how He still shines in the hearts of those who have allowed Him in?
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