The Greatest Gift

     Ah, the sounds and smells overwhelm me.  Food and people everywhere.  The fresh home baked bread sent it's wonderful pungent aroma over to me on the slight breeze blowing my way.  I had not eaten in several days and the fragrance was overwhelming.  The small amount of food that we had went to feed the wife and kids.  With no money to buy food, I watched the street vendor out of the corner of my eyes.  I was not normally a thief, but with hunger and the amount of people milling around, I was just waiting for my chance.  Eureka, there it was.  He turned his back for a moment to speak to a customer and quick as a fox, I snatched the bread and ran. 
     "Thief, thief", he shouted and I knew that I was in trouble.  My bad knees slowed me down and allowed the young men to overtake me.  As desperate as I was, I could not escape.  Being caught could mean the loss of my hand, but desperate times make for desperate measures.  After loosing a couple of teeth and a broken nose, I was taken before the magistrate.  As he looked at my condition and listened to my sad story, he had compassion on me.  Instead of cutting off my hand, he sentenced me to six years hard labor.  Now I know why I got to keep my hand.  Nothing to do with compassion.
     Prison was hard, however I did get one meal a day or rather I got to eat one time a day.  Just enough to keep up my strength, but that was more than my family got.  During the day was terrible, moving heavy stones to pave the roads was back breaking work.  Later due to my age, I was given to the group that poured sand and soil into the cracks around the stones to level out the road.  It was night that was the worst, though.  We were kept in the dungeon with no light, locked in our own stocks by our hands.  You soon learned to control your bodily functions until you were released in the morning.  The sound of grown men crying and weeping made my plight only the more deplorable.
     This night, at the end of my sentence was different.  From a slight distance, we could hear two men praying and singing psalms at the top of their lungs.  Praising their God as if they were on top of a mountain, not down in a deep, dark, damp dungeon.  They were locked in their stocks with hands and feet.  This was reserved for the worst offenders.  When they had been brought in during the day, the jailer was given strict orders to guard them with his life.  If they escaped, the jailer would be killed. 
     As Paul and Silas prayed, the dungeon was rocked back and forth by a massive earthquake that shook the foundation.  The doors came open and the stocks were broken away from all the prisoners.  The jailer seeing the destruction and supposing the prisoners gone, pulled his sword to take his own life.  Paul cried out with a loud voice, "Do thyself no harm, for we are all here."  The jailer cried out for a light and went in and kneeled to Paul and Silas.  "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"  "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved and thou house."
     As I heard the story of Jesus Christ and His death and Resurrection, I believed also.  The following week I was released and reunited with my family.  I knew that had I not stolen the bread, I would never have received the most precious gift of all, eternal salvation.  God is with us