Christmas Terror

I was woken up this morning by the vibrations of my cell phone. The first words out of the callers mouth was that they had found a money bag apparently belonging to our church. My heart dropped, fear welled up that we have now experienced a major burglery. Coincidently there had been a planned power outage in our churches vacinity. I relunctantly dressed and headed to the church. Upon arriving, I entered the office where the supposed money bag had been secured. Much to my pleasure I immediatly noticed that computers and other valuables were still where they should be. Doors were secure, no glass broken, everything appeared to be ok. I then found our staff person that had secured the returned bag and we began looking through it.

Much to our pleasure we discovered that it wasn't our churches bag but one of the venders we do business with. Apparently they had collected one of our checks in addition to several other companies funds and somehow the bag had ended up in the street. It appeared to have been run over, yet there was still cash inside with the checks.

A gentleman named Lonnie, I have no other identification, saw the bag on the side of the road, looked through it discovering our check and assumed the bag must be ours and returned it. I don't think Lonnie was an angel but with a real life illustration of "man's" generosity at least some of my faith in "man kind" is restored. There are still honest people, people who understand the essence of Christmas - a spirit of giving. I am very grateful to now be at home, having enjoyed a great breakfast with my family and not figuring out how to have church services without electronics or a damaged facility. Thank you Lonnie, Thank you Lord! May your Christmas "terrors" be turned to Christmas joys.