This story happened December 1990…a family favorite that happened to us.

By Jim Judge

One Christmas our family shared in a kind of small Christmas miracle.

Some good friends of ours, Bill and Mary Beauvais and their three children were working as full time missionaries in Africa. They were in the midst of a severe time. Gabon was in economic crisis and so were they. Their financial support level was running low, partially a result of the Gulf War and its impact on the value of the dollar and Bill and Mary were struggling to provide even the essentials, sometimes having to make hard choices between things like medical care for a child and the next meal. With Christmas approaching Bill and Mary watched helplessly as they saw their children moving fast toward a head-on collision with disappointment. They were facing Christmas with no gifts whatsoever? It was starting to get to them.

 “Tis a gift to be simple,” as the old Shaker hymn says, a gift afforded to many children, but few adults. Three weeks before Christmas, their four-year-old son, Ryan, spotted the one thing he wanted in an old magazine and he did what 4 year olds are particularly good at – he obsessed. No question about it. Santa Claus was going to bring him what he saw in that advertisement. It was a small dinosaur, a small pink brontosaurus. Mary winced everytime he brought it up which was about 30 times a day because she knew this was an impossible item really. First of all the magazine was three years old and the item was not even for sale, it was a give-away at a fast food chain. And oh, by the way, they were sitting smack in the middle of equatorial Africa! Mary tried to distract him as best she could, even going so far as to hide the magazine, but it was of no use. Ryan had fixated on it. A pink dinosaur was what he kept talking about, he was sure a pink dinosaur was going to be waiting for him that Christmas. It’s one thing to hold to your parent principles that gifts aren’t the true meaning of Christmas. Try explaining that profound theological truth to an empty-handed 4 year old little boy on Christmas morning.

Bill and Mary tried to think of other things. When the Friday before Christmas came around, their neighbors stopped by city post office in the center of town and brought back a notice that there was a package there waiting for the Bill and Mary. The problem was that the post office was way across town, Bill and Mary didn’t even have enough money for the bus ride into town let alone whatever customs might be assessed. They told themselves it probably didn’t matter anyway, government offices have a way of closing way before the posted hours in Africa, particularly before a holiday and the package was likely just some ministry materials like books or supplies. But their neighbors said they would be going back by the post office later that afternoon and just in case it was still open, they would stop in and check.

It was 5:25 PM when their neighbors arrived at the post office, which was scheduled to close at 5:30PM. There was no one there except one lone worker who didn’t look all that official, sort of leaning on a broom, pretending to be cleaning up. They handed him the slip signed by the Beauvais’. Wordlessly He disappeared into the back room and in short order, came out with a large package and simply handed it over. The return address was Jim and Cindy Judge, Wheaton, Illinois and the postmark was February. My wife Cindy had sent the box of items in response to a request Mary had made in a letter almost a year earlier, asking mostly for some unglamorous but unavailable items like a new mop head, a home permanent, and some tile grout. Cindy, taking seriously Mary’s admonition not to spend a lot on postage, had sent the big boot box via surface mail and the post office apparently took the word “surface” literally. It must have been rowed across the Atlantic. Where the box had spent the last 10 months was anyone’s guess. While putting the package together Cindy, as she is so wont to do, also included several other unspecified items: some new clothing for the children, music tapes, books, dolls and fun things from around our house. She found lots of things for Ryan’s ten and eight year old sisters, who were about the same age as our girls, but nothing seemed very appropriate for a 4-year-old little boy.

Just before closing the package, one item in our toybox caught Cindy’s eye. It was a long discarded toy from a Burger King Happy Meal, something we had gotten several years before. It was a toy promoting the animated film The Land Before Time. It was a dinosaur….a brontosaurus, a pink brontosaurus to be exact. Cindy tucked it deeply into the bottom of the box and hoped it would do.

Ten months later, alone in their bedroom on Christmas Eve, Mary and Bill unpacked that box from the Judges. Item by item, they were overwhelmed by the things inside. There was something special for everyone, everyone it seemed except for Ryan. But when they reached the bottom and pulled out that last item, that pink dinosaur, that one thing utterly impossible to deliver, that thing no adult would have been foolish enough to even consider praying for, they were stunned. It was a true gift from the “other” list, that other list, the list we all keep secret and safe inside, the one we have all made in one way or another, if only in our hearts. The list with those desires too unreasonable, too costly, too extravagant, too, in a word, dear to even risk mentioning. Yet sometimes, some very special times, an item from the other list appears. And when it does we know we are dearly loved.

Mary and Bill held the pink dinosaur in their hands and were speechless. Ten months before their son had even seen its picture in an old magazine, some friend thousands of miles away had placed it in a box, a box that was delayed and sat waiting for that one exact best possible moment to reappear. Tears ran down their faces. Was it all the product of time and chance? Some happy coincidence? A momentary look beyond the shadowlands of our everyday world. As they stared down at the toy they knew their answer…this gift required so much knowing, so much care, so much attention that it was as if the curtain had been drawn back and they had been given their own gift…. a sweet glimpse of the Savior’s smiling face… and they were dazzled.

            It wasn’t a very big miracle. No one ended poverty, received a million dollars or saved a life. It was a small item really. But if Christmas speaks any truth it tells us this…..the best of God’s Christmas gifts, the greatest of Christmas miracles….comes wrapped humbly…in a small bundle.