The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth

A beautiful story, by Howard C. Schade, Pastor

The brand new pastor and his wife were newly assigned to reopen an old and aged church, The First Reformed Church in Nyack, New York. It was very run down and needed a lot of work. They set a goal to have everything done in time to have their first service on Christmas Eve.

They worked hard cleaning, repairing pews, plastering walls, painting, and washing the beautiful stained glass windows.

They were making wonderful progress when a terrible storm hit the town. When the rain ended, the pastor’s heart sank.  The roof had leaked and caused a large area of plaster to fall off the front wall just behind the pulpit. It would be visible to everyone.

There wasn’t time to fix it before the Christmas Eve service the next day. The pastor cleaned up the mess on the floor with disappointment in his heart.

On his way home, he noticed that a local business was having a flea market sale for charity, so he stopped and went inside. One of the items he found was a beautiful, handmade, ivory-colored, ornately stitched tablecloth with exquisite golden trim.

The thought came to him. It was just the right size to cover the hole the storm caused in the front wall of the church. He bought it and headed back to the church.

By this time, it had started to snow. As he was approaching the church steps, he noticed an older woman waiting for a bus. He knew there was no bus coming for 45 minutes and encouraged her to wait inside the warm church.

She was grateful and took a seat in a pew while he got out a ladder and some tools. He wanted to see if this beautiful tablecloth would cover the ugly hole in the wall.

When he finished putting it up, he could hardly believe how beautiful it looked! And it covered up the entire problem area.

Then he noticed the woman walking down the center aisle towards him. Her face was as white as a sheet. “Reverend,” she asked. “Where did you get that tablecloth?”

The woman asked him to check the lower right corner to see if the initials EBG were stitched there. He said they were. She told him the initials were hers.  She had made the tablecloth many, many years before, in Austria.

The woman could hardly believe it as the pastor relayed how the storm left a hole in the wall at the front of the church.  Then he explained that he found the tablecloth at the flea market and it was the perfect size to cover the hole.

She told him that before the war, she and her husband lived in Austria. When the Nazis came, her husband made her leave, planning to follow her the next week. He never made it out of the country and was imprisoned. She was told he was dead and she never saw her husband or her home again.

The pastor wanted to give her the tablecloth, but she made the pastor keep it for the church. He insisted on driving her home. It was the least he could do. She lived on the other side of the city and was only in the area near the church to go to an appointment.

It was a wonderful Christmas Eve service. Many came from the neighborhood. The Christmas hymns, the Pastor’s words of the birth of the Christ child, as well as the rebirth of the church, touched everyone’s heart. The Christmas spirit was alive in the hearts of everyone there.

At the end of the service, the pastor and his wife thanked each person at the door for attending and many said that they would return every Sunday.

One older man the pastor often hired to do some painting came at the pastor’s request. After the service, he continued to sit in one of the pews and stare. The pastor wondered why he wasn’t leaving.

The man asked him where he got the beautiful tablecloth on the wall. He said it was identical to one his wife had made many years ago when they lived in Austria, before the war. “How could there be two of them that were so much alike?”

He told the pastor how the Nazis had come and he forced his wife to flee the country for her safety. His plan was to follow her a week later, but he was arrested and put in a camp. He never saw his wife or his home again.

The pastor answered the old man’s question about how he found the tablecloth and then asked if he and his wife might be allowed to take the older gentleman for a little ride.

The pastor and his wife drove the man to the same house where he took the older woman the day before. He helped the man climb three flights of stairs up to the woman’s apartment, knocked on the door, and then watched the greatest Christmas reunion he ever could have imagined.

It was truly a Christmas miracle.

-*-

“The Gold and Ivory Tablecloth” is a true story. It appeared in the December 1954 issue of Reader's Digest and in the Reader's Digest Treasury of Joy and Inspiration.

Poet/Writer/Author of 5 books.
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