The lights and decorations of Christmas had filled us with joy. As we drove home from the mall, I felt a warm, contented feeling inside. Our two children chatted excitedly, waving their hands as they talked. We were all caught up in the anticipation of Christmas morning.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw two people—one big and one small—standing by the side of the road. They were holding something. Our kids didn’t notice them; they were too busy laughing about the gift they had picked out for their Mom.

At the next corner I turned and drove back around the block. While negotiating a corner I pulled out my wallet and removed the cash—all $13.

“What are you doing, Dad?” our daughter asked.

“You’ll see. Just a minute. . . . there, look up there,” I said, “Do you see those people?”

“Yeah, Dad, but what are they doing?” our son asked. 

“Roll the window down,” I told him.

“What for?”

“Just go ahead and do it. You’ll see.”

As we drove closer our children’s eyes grew large like round saucers. The bigger figure was a man holding a sign that read: “I will work for food.” The smaller figure was a little boy about our son’s age. He held a sign that read: “I will do chores for toys.”

I pressed the $13 into our wide-eyed son’s hands and rolled to a stop in front of this down-and-out father and son. “Give him the money, son,” I said. A quiet hush had fallen over the infectiously excited confines of our car.

The man asked if we had some work they could do for us. “No, but go ahead and take the money. We hope everything works out for you.”

“Really, are you sure? We would really rather do some work for you.”

“No, that’s okay. Sorry we don’t have more.”

Silence replaced laughter as we pulled away from the curb. No one said a word for the remainder of the ride home.

“Serving others” has always been a family value for us. That Christmas experience revealed how actions are a form of speech that often penetrate our hearts far deeper than words: “Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth” (1 John 3:18). 

Merry Christmas,

Pat