The lost letter

Is it possible that the age-old animosity between Sleeping Beauty's family and Maleficent began because a royal invitation was innocently lost in the mail?

I finally tackled my landfill of Christmas mail this week and came upon a letter that had been misdirected to my house. As I drove the missive to its rightful owner I pondered the potentialities. What might be in that communiqué? An overture to reconciliation? A long-awaited answer to a dangling question? A marriage proposal? A "Dear John"? A thank you card for some birthday gift? What if I had tossed it in the trash?

If it hasn't happened to you yet, it will someday, that a gesture of love or appreciation sent your way will not arrive because of some fluke. You will, of course, never know it when it happens. Chances are that that friend of yours just never bothered to answer the 10-pager you poured your heart into-but there is always the outside chance that her reply ended up in the wrong person's box. More than likely your niece's rudeness accounts for the lack of acknowledgement of the Crock-Pot you sent-but one cannot know for sure. In the 1964 film The Umbrellas of Cherbourg, the lost letter from a soldier at war is the device on which the story hinges, and destinies are altered forever.

Last Christmas an anonymous Korean young adult group from an unnamed church left a present at my door. Because I don't know who they are, I have to be nice to every Korean I happen to meet. 1 Corinthians 13 says, "Love believes all things, love hopes all things." If it that weren't just godly advice, it would still be the best policy.