There are some stories I have read several times but still can not get enough. I often return to these stories because they are so good that they meet me right in the heart every time. And my maybe absolute favorite is this story. It has been circulating online for many years and its origins are somewhat unclear. Some pages claim that it was written by a man named Howard C.Schade and was published in the Reader's Digest magazine for the first time. If, in turn, he had the story away, or if it is based on a real event, I do not know. But sometimes I do not think the origin of a story plays such a big part. If a story succeeds in touching so much that you have to wipe the tears afterwards - then it is certainly worth reading.
The new pastor and his wife had just been assigned to their first parish: a church that would just be reopened in a suburb of Brooklyn. They arrived early in October, spotting their possibilities just to find out that the church was very tired and would need a lot of work. They set up a goal where they would make everything clear to their first worship service on Christmas Eve.
They worked hard, repaired benches and plaster walls, painted, etc. and on 18th December they were ahead of schedule and just wanted to make it the last. So on the 19th of December, the town was hit by a horrible storm - a powerful rainforest hit the area and stayed for two days. On the 21st, the pastor went to church. His heart fell when he saw that the roof of the church had leaked water, which had led to the large piece of a plaster wall falling from the altar room just behind the pulpit.
The pastor cleaned the worst mess on the floor and saw no other way than setting up the worship service on Christmas Eve. On his way home, he found that one of the shops in town provided a flea market to raise money for charity so he decided to stay on. One of the objects he found there was a beautiful handmade ivory painted cloth. A delicious handwork with a cross embroidered in the middle of the tablecloth. It was in perfect size to cover the hole in the church wall. He immediately bought it and went back to the church.
By this time it had started to snow. An older woman came running in the opposite direction and tried to catch the bus. She missed it, so the pastor offered her to wait inside the warm church until the next bus would go 45 minutes later. She sat on a bench and did not notice how the pastor went and picked up a ladder, hangers and so on to put up the tablecloth he just bought. The pastor could hardly believe his eyes when he saw how beautiful the tablecloth was and how well it covered the hole.
Then suddenly he discovered how the woman was walking down the hallway. Her face was pale like a white sheet. "Pastor," she asked "where have you found that canvas?" The pastor explained where he had found it. The woman then asked him to look down at the right hand corner of the screen to see if the initials "EBG" were embroidered there. That was them. This proved to be the woman's initials and she had done this tablecloth 35 years ago in Austria. The woman could hardly believe it when she heard how the pastor had come over it. She explained that before the war she and her husband had been wealthy people in Austria.
When the Nazis came she was forced to fly. Her husband was to follow her the following week, but unfortunately she was arrested and imprisoned and she did not recognize him or her home again. The pastor would give her back the cloth, but she insisted that he should keep it in the church. The pastor asked, at least, to shoot her home, he thought it was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of Staten Island and was only in Brooklyn during the day to work.
What a wonderful service they had on Christmas. The church was almost full. The music and atmosphere were incredible. At the end of the ministry, the. pastor and his wife took good leave of all in the church at the gate of the church, and many said they would undoubtedly come back. An elderly man, whom the pastor recognized from the area, remained in his place and stared and the pastor wondered why he did not leave.
The man then asked the pastor where he had grabbed that cloth when it was identical to a similar cloth that his wife had done many years ago when they lived in Austria before the war broke out and now he wondered how there could be two cloths like was so unbelievable?
He told the pastor how the Nazis came and how he forced his wife to fly for safety and how the thought was that he would come after her but be arrested and imprisoned. He never saw his wife or her home again in the next 35 years. The pastor then asked if the man would like to accompany him on a small ride. They drove to Staten Island to the same house that the pastor had released by the woman three days earlier. He helped the man up the steep stairs to the woman's apartment, knocked on the door and then saw the most beautiful reunion he had ever seen.
There are moments in life when the stars simply stand right in the sky. Everything is where it will be at the very right moment for something unbelievable to happen. And when that happens, there is no logical explanation. It was only meant that it would happen.