The Price of Heaven

Nobody noticed when the ham slipped out of the tiny smokehouse on Christmas Eve day, wrapped inside my grandmother’s tattered apron, cradled in her skin-and-bone arms,.

Nobody noticed that along with the ham, a piece of heaven slipped out of a little boy’s heart.

Nobody knows what went on behind the furrowed woman’s brow as she braved the bitter-cold whistling wind up the narrow stone-walled path.

Nobody knows what other weight did she carry on her heart even as she carried the ham and gave it as a gift, as a Christmas offering to the men of the cloth.

There is no record of what happened to the fateful ham on the next day. 

Maybe the priests made a big feast for all the poor and hungry, lame and crippled who gratefully received it and blessed God for His gracious provision. 

Or maybe the priests shared it among themselves, wiping their mouths as they patted their bulging waistlines, without any awareness that they might have done anything wrong.  And they thanked God for His generous provision.

Certain mysteries remain forever wrapped inside a mother’s greasy apron and cloaked inside the heaven's mysterious ways..

There was no Christmas feast for the little boy that year. But the emptiness of his 6-year-old heart hurt badder than the emptiness of his stomach.

And in his little 6 year-old-mind God-of-the-lavish-Christmas-feast became God-who-takes-away-the-ham-from-the-hungry that year. 

And God watched it all happen and didn’t do a thing.

Funny things that God allows in His name.