Stories

The Greatest Gift

By Sandra Humphrey

I hate spinach. I hate math problems. But most of all, I, Keisha Jane Parker, hate cleaning my room.

Unfortunately, it’s Saturday morning and that’s just what I’m doing. I’m stuck cleaning my room. I’ve just finished vacuuming under the bed, although I was sorry to disturb the dust bunnies peacefully huddling there. Next on the agenda: cleaning out my closet.

Mom told me I had to get rid of all the clutter in there! Those are her words, not mine. I really wouldn’t call all that stuff “clutter.” Some of my favorite things are stashed in my closet.

Like my best baseball mitt, all the seashells I collected last summer at the beach, all my swimming gear, and even some of my favorite books. Speaking of books, I just found the scrapbook I started two years ago. I had almost forgotten all about it.

I haven’t looked at it for months, and I figure Mom won’t care if I take a short break.

As I’m sitting here on the floor of my closet turning the pages, I’m beginning to relive some of those special memories.

Here’s a picture of Jasmine and me at the school Pet Parade last spring. That’s her with Rufus, her huge English sheepdog, and that’s me with Vega, our white German shepherd.

And here’s a whole bunch of pictures from our church picnic in July. Including a picture of our watermelon-eating contest, with Jasmine and me with our faces totally covered with smooshed watermelon goop. The winners!

Jasmine’s in almost every picture. She moved in next door two years ago, and we’ve been best friends ever since.

We’re not much alike at all. I’m quiet and I usually have my head stuck in a book. Jasmine’s really outgoing. She walks into a room and you just know something interesting is going to happen. Jasmine is what my mom calls a “live wire.”

Even though she’s great, sometimes I get kind of embarrassed when I’m with Jasmine, though. It’s because she’s always overflowing with ideas, and she just says what she thinks, whether other people agree with her or not. Sometime’s it’s a problem, or at least it feels like one to me.

Like last year during one of the rehearsals for our class play. Jasmine was up there on stage playing the part of the detective when suddenly she stopped dead in the middle of a sentence and told Mr. Weeden the scene was just all wrong. He wasn’t exactly pleased to hear it!

Actually, when we tried it her way, it turned out she was right, and we ended up changing the scene. Even though Jasmine hadn’t exactly been tactful about passing along her opinion, it seemed to get everyone thinking in new ways. Her idea worked so much better, in fact, that we ended up winning the school award for Most Original Play.

Jasmine gets me thinking a lot, too. Sometimes about things I usually just kind of take for granted. It’s like she sees everything fresh and new and for the first time.

Like at our Good Friday service yesterday. Jasmine’s family doesn’t belong to any church, so sometimes she goes to my church with us.

Well, anyway, it was Good Friday, and Father Paul was telling the story of Jesus’ crucifixion. How Jesus was praying in the Garden of Gethsemane, how he was arrested, and then finally how he was crucified on the cross with a thief on each side.

I was listening to the story, of course, but I’ve heard it a zillion times, so I wasn’t really paying that much attention. But right in the middle of the story I heard this really weird sound —like someone crying.

Then I realized it was someone crying. It was Jasmine. She was trying to be quiet, but she kept gulping, and the tears were just rolling down her face nonstop. As the service ended and they hung a black veil over the cross, the lights went really low and we were all supposed to leave the church quietly.

That is, we were supposed to leave. But Jasmine seemed to be glued to her seat, just staring at the cross covered with the black veil.

It’s like she was off in her own little world just staring at that cross.

After a few minutes, she wiped her eyes, but the whole time we were walking home, she was really quiet. Then suddenly out of the blue, she asked, “Why would he do that, Keisha?”

I had no clue what she was talking about, so I answered her question with a question of my own. “Do what?”

“Why would he die such a painful death all alone like that just to save all the rest of us? How can someone love us that much? I’ve never known anyone who loves anyone that much!”

Well, I’ve got to tell you, that really got me to thinking. I guess I’ve always just taken the Easter Story for granted, but now that I was seeing it through Jasmine’s eyes, I was beginning to feel what she was feeling. How could someone love us so much that he would endure what he endured just to save us all?

As we headed home, Jasmine was still totally quiet, like she was thinking these really deep thoughts. We didn’t talk much after that.

Now I’m thinking that Jasmine really was right. Again! Jesus gave us the greatest gift he could give—his own life to save the rest of us. He opened the gates of heaven to us all!

And I’m also thinking that I can hardly wait to take Jasmine to church tomorrow on Easter Sunday, so she can find out the rest of the story.

That’s really going to blow her away!

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