The Birthday Card

The weekly routine wearied me. Refresh the page of job postings frequently. Click on the few that might pertain to me. Await good news for a day or two after the occasional interview, and then pump the brakes as the van traversed the short road from Expectation to Disillusionment.

I needed to get out of town. Without a job I was free to go, so I headed west and found myself in a warehouse called “Hope.” The men who worked there had all been prisoners; many of them had spent time behind bars. No locks adorned the doors at Hope.

On a wintry December day, one of the men at Hope had a birthday. Folks passed around a card. I signed it and moved on. I was sorting clothes, trying to master the art of eyeballing differences among small, medium and large children’s garments, when the Birthday Boy strode up to me. He looked me in the eye and thanked me for the card. “It’s the first card I’ve received in three or four years.”

Over lunch, I heard more of his story. He worked on a farm for most of his life. Prescription drugs led to drug problems, theft and two years in prison. His family stopped talking with him. Years of birthdays piled up without acknowledgement from his daughter. He was computer illiterate. He went to Hope for structure, training – and because he was too old to be incarcerated again.

While some roads between Disillusionment and Hope are more scenic than others, most routes include at least a short drive on the Perspective Tollway. Some of us need a couple of flat tires and a vanload of joy-mongering Good Samaritans to fix us up and point us in the right direction.

The man at Hope needed a birthday card. One day the King will turn to a vanload of folks who signed a birthday card and say, “I needed a birthday card, and you gave one to me.” Then the righteous will answer him, “Lord, when did we give you a birthday card?” The King will reply, “Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Happy birthday, Jesus! Thanks for giving me Hope.