Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now
The Gift
It's too good, that's the trouble with the heaven to which Jesus the Way is taking us. It
can't be true, the gift is too enormous, certainly it can't be meant for me.
In the inquirers' classes before my confirmation, I went through a sequence of emotions.
Disbelief, dawning comprehension, joy. Jesus was my Truth, my Way, my Life?
Six months after my trip to the cathedral in June 1962, when I recited the Creed and was
confirmed, I watched the same progression mirrored in the face of a small boy who likewise
received an unimaginable gift. Tomu was the seven-year-old son of the yard man whose services
came with the house we rented in Uganda that fall. All day Tomu trailed behind his father as
he cut the grass with great swipes of his machete.
Tomu followed his father, that is, until the little boy heard a car coming. At the approach
of an automobile - an infrequent occurrence on our isolated hilltop - Tomu would run to
see it appear. He simply doted on cars; he could hear one coming moments before the cloud of
red dust on the road below alerted me to an impending visit.
Often it was the green VW bug driven by the editor of the Kampala newspaper for which John
and I were writing. As long as that car sat in our driveway, Tomu would hover near it,
occasionally reaching out to touch it reverently with a single finger.
Christmas
As Christmas approached, I went shopping in Kampala. And there I saw it, in the window of a
toy store: a miniature VW eight inches long. And wonder of wonders, it was green!
When we gave Tomu his package on Christmas Eve, he made no attempt to open it. He turned the
box in its red-and-gold wrapping over and over in evident fascination, then politely handed
it back. Nine-year-old Donn was Tomu's idol. Donn took the box, untied the ribbon, undid one
end of the paper, and gave it to the little boy again. Tomu gazed admiringly at this new
configuration and again handed it back. Taking off the rest of the gift wrap, Donn lifted up
the box lid.
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