As they pulled up at home after a jaunt to the grocery, another car scuttled out the other end of their driveway.
They didn’t recognize the vehicle or the figures who had hopped in a split-second earlier, but the action certainly was suspicious.
Then they found one Christmas wreath on the ground beside the barn and another, still hanging on the white clapboards, with its wires quite bent.
Yes, two people were trying to steal the Christmas wreaths from the siding!
Kinda puts a damper on that “goodwill to men,” doesn’t it? Though the phrase is, more accurately, “to men of good will.”
We’re still baffled that some people have so little conscience that they’ll resort to this, but maybe they’re desperate to veil themselves in images foreign to their real nature.
Um, look around, though, and it’s far more universal than I want to think.
This points toward the hard work of changing hearts and actions – literally, repentance – that the life of Jesus embodies.
Well, I won’t go off on that sermon just now. But we are still saddened by the audacity of ill will.
I wonder what the point was. You can’t pawn them. And I can’t imagine wreath thieves having Christmas spirit.
Maybe they wanted their place to look more acceptable, but wreaths aren’t that expensive.
Or maybe they wanted to spoil someone else’s experience, along the lines, say, of those who deface the historical markers downtown.
We are still baffled and saddened by it all.
Strange and sad isn’t it, that someone would want to steal Christmas wreaths?
Very strange and very sad, indeed …