Prodigal: I’m snug as a bug, and ready for a story.

Me: Maybe this one you will like.

This is by Caryll Houselander

As a child during World War I, I attended a French convent school. One of the nuns was from Bavaria. She spoke little English and very poor French, and she made no real contact with the children. Local police interrogated her as an “enemy alien,” and there were even subtle murmurs in the community that she was a spy dressed as a nun. As the Germans advanced, so did the nun’s loneliness and isolation.

One day as I passed the bootroom, the little cubicle where our shoes were kept, I saw the Bavarian nun sitting alone, cleaning shoes. I can see her now as if it were yesterday–a tall, gaunt woman with brilliant red cheeks, and eyes so dark that they looked black. There she was, wearing her large, cobalt blue apron, with a child’s pair of shoes on her lap.

Then I noticed the tears running down her rosy cheeks and falling onto the shoes. Abashed, I dropped my eyes to her large toil-worn hands. Hands, red and chapped, with blunted nails, which were folded in a way that expressed inconsolable grief.

We were both quite silent, I staring away not wanting to see her crying.

At last, when I raised my head, I saw an unbelievable sight: the nun’s head was circled by a crown of thorns.

I shall not attempt to explain this. I am simply telling the thing as I saw it. That bowed head was weighed down under the crown.

I stood dumbfounded a few seconds, and then I told her, “I would not cry if I were wearing the crown of thorns like you are.”

She looked startled, and asked, “What do you mean?”

I sat down beside her, and as I described to her what I had seen, a glow of joy enveloped her, dispelling the grief.

Together we polished the children’s shoes.

Hear now, O Joshua the high priest, thou, and thy fellows that sit before thee: for they are men wondered at: for, behold, I will bring forth my servant the BRANCH. Zechariah 3:8 (KJV)

Jennifer Van Allen

www.theprodigalpig.com

www.faithincounseling.org