All the boys love Lisa, who works a minimum wage job at McDonald’s to help support her father who is in a wheelchair. Yes, all the boys at work are crazy about her, but maybe they would think twice if they had any notion of her troubled, sordid past. And especially Alan should think twice. Alan, a sheltered young man with epilepsy who only wants to save money to go to Seminary School and become a preacher. Only trouble is he’s fallen hard for Lisa. But he’s playing with fire because she’s running from the past and has big plans for the future. She wants to be an actress.

The sin that encompassed thee when thou with memory’s shame,

Dids’t unfold to me your story of that which was before I came.”

The Reverend picked up his Bible. He thumbed through the beginning chapters of Genesis. He found Chapter 3 verse 4: But the serpent said to the woman, “You shall not die. For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” He closed his Bible, set it back on his nightstand and closed his eyes. He tried to recall: What was the book that did it? He had heard of artists and actors and writers who when asked why they had chosen a vocation so obviously fraught with peril and financial insecurity, had replied because they had no other choice. He understood what they meant. And his passion must come from God, he thought. Why else would he possess such a burning desire for books and for knowledge? But now he knew better. How could he have been so oblivious to how displeased the congregation was with him? He reached over and once again grabbed his Bible off his nightstand. He flipped through it. Where was it? He finally found it. Matthew 6 verse 24: No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. He closed his Bible. It was the books. He still had his Faith but he had no purpose. Because he no longer had a job. It was the books.

THE CHRISTMAS PRESENT

 

I went to open the front door but something was keeping it from opening.  I looked down & that’s when I saw it: the most beautiful, wondrous, perfectly-wrapped Christmas present I’d ever seen. I brought it in the house & we both stared at it in awe.  “You expecting a present?” I asked my wife.

“No.”

“I’ll bet it’s a mistake.  They probably delivered it to the wrong house.”

“What’s the card say?”

I looked at it. I was completely at a loss.

“It has my name on it.”

“Open it.”

We took it to the kitchen table.  Funny thing was, I was reluctant to open it.  Not because I thought it was a bomb but because I hated destroying such a beautiful object.  I forced myself to rip the paper.  And you’ll never guess in a million years what was inside--a business card.  Or what looked like a business card.  This is what it said:

 Seymour Tannenbaum

(1919-1996)

“Who’s Seymour Tannenbaum?” my wife asked.

“I don’t know,” I told her.