The low angle of the January sun reflected brightly on the little girl’s
red tricycle. Gleefully she rode it as her mother walked beside her. They had
just left a large Goodwill store.
I was driving by and just happened to notice. Traffic was light, and I
quickly took in the scene.
The girl, perhaps three or four, was just beaming; her whole face shown
with happiness. Mom, carrying a load of
clothes, wore a meek and gentle smile. But it revealed stress lines. They were
headed to mom’s car, a Honda Civic that had seen better days.
The tableau touched me deeply, for I could see a possible story there. I
imagined Mom might be a single parent. Perhaps medical bills, or needed car
repairs had meant Santa would be late this year. This was the child’s
Christmas. And I remembered a Christmas many years before when I was a single
parent, too. I had lost a good job just before school started that year. I connected,
for I had been there.
As I drove on, I prayed for mom and daughter. Whether they really were as
I had imagined seemed beside the point, because prayer never hurts. We were
well past Christmas. It was now the season of Epiphany. As I considered that, I
remember how Mary, the mother of Jesus, had “treasured” things and “pondered
them in her heart.” And now amazing things were happening. Mysterious men of
the East followed a star. Angels sang in heavenly chorus. I pictured Jesus
coming up from the baptismal water as the very heavens opened above him. The
drama was afoot.
And so it was that cold winter day: not millennial drama, just a small
scene played out on a suburban parking lot while its message nurtured an
eternal truth. We sometimes may feel abandoned, lost, with little hope. Then one
day, the truth sets us free. Epiphany is made personal.
So that’s what I prayed for the woman and her daughter. And a bright red
tricycle became more than met the eye.
(WRITER’S NOTE – This was
originally published on Jan. 7 a year ago in The Spirit, the weekly newsletter
of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Richmond, Va. It seems just as timely now as
we near the close of the season of Epiphany.
