Humility Built-Ins

Yesterday I got a package in the mail from The Word Among Us, a Catholic devotional magazine that includes meditations on the daily scriptures along with articles on a variety of subjects. Two years ago, I wrote a story for their Advent edition. My article wound up in the wrong folder in someone's computer and didn't make it into the magazine.

As I opened my package from the publication, and saw five copies of the December 2007 Family Edition, I realized that my article had been published. I flipped through the magazine, and there it was.

I was excited to see the article in print, and decided I would give away some of the extra copies to a few close friends. The cover art included a perfect Advent shot -- models posing as Joseph and Mary looking at baby Jesus. It would make a lovely Advent gift.

Then I came back to the pile a few hours later to discover someone had given Joseph a ZZ Top beard and Mary a pair of glasses -- on almost all my copies.

And that was the end of that.