A drawing at a bus stop in downtown Columbus, Ohio in the late 1970s that I drew in 1977. (Credit: Ken Drenten)

A Dusty Tires Short Story

By Ken Drenten

Part 3 – Conclusion

After Moses had left him, suddenly Scrooge was on a city street corner, but it was not a city he recognized at all.

Strange-looking wheeled conveyances without horses crowded the street. Bright and colorful lights illuminated by no flames lit the night sky. More buildings than he could count, made of metal and glass, stretched higher than the Tower of London. Crowds of people walked along the streets, all hurrying to go places. And above all, there was no stench of rotting sewage or the foul air of coal smoke. Everything looked clean and smooth. He was astounded.

“This place is amazing!” he said out loud. “I wonder where I am?”

“You’re in a city in America, Mr. Scrooge,” a scruffy-looking man beside him said. He was dressed in jeans, a hooded sweatshirt and sandals. He wore his sandy-colored hair over his ears and a beard on his face. He slung a leather backpack over one shoulder and held a small, worn book in one hand.

“You’re in a place somewhat like your hometown, London, which is much bigger than this. We’re in a city called Columbus, Ohio.”

Scrooge stared at long vehicles filled with many people, and at tall buildings made of concrete with uncountable numbers of windows. He was dumbfounded. Then he turned to his new companion.

“Who are you?”

“Forgive me. My name is Paul,” the man said, extending his hand in friendship. “God gave me the responsibility for carrying the message about the meaning of Christmas to places that eventually reached your country, and this one as well.”

“Paul – Saint Paul?”

“Just call me Paul. That will be fine,” the man said with a smile.

“So tell me, what happened to my old London town?”

“Oh, it still exists, but you probably wouldn’t recognize it. This city is a bit smaller and not quite as overwhelming as London. We are now about 175 years after the time you lived on this earth, and a little over 2,000 years after I carried the Good News to the Roman Empire,” Paul said. “At the time you lived, this city didn’t even exist. Now it is part of a vast country with hundreds of millions of people. Amazing how time changes a place, isn’t it?”

“Amazing, yes,” Scrooge said. “All these people in wheeled machines made of iron! What are they doing? And where are the horses?”

“Come, walk with me,” Paul said. “They are riding in automobiles and buses, returning their Christmas gifts. In these days, Christmas will mostly be about putting up lights as decorations and spending money to give gifts, and then taking down lights, returning gifts and spending more money with what they call gift cards. And they do something else they call online buying, but don’t ask me to explain that.”

Scrooge fell into step beside him. “Is all this a good thing?”

“If you are a merchant or a lender of money, definitely,” Paul said. “For most people, it’s not bad, but it’s not the best. All this buying and selling seems to obscure the truth about Christ’s birth and what it means for all people.”

“I buy gifts for people at Christmastime and it helps them. Everyone in Bob Cratchit’s family and mine looks forward to the turkeys I buy each year. It makes me feel good – and them too,” Scrooge said. “At least, I feel better than I did a few years ago.”

“I’m very glad for that, and it’s all well and good, I must say. And how long does that feeling last?”

“Not very long,” Scrooge admitted. “Maybe a week or two.”

“You’re right, trying to be good and trying to keep rules and laws never lasts long for people,” Paul said with a sigh. “I should know, I believed in God and I was the best there was at trying to obey God’s law, and at making sure everyone else did, too. I thought I was a good person — very nearly perfect — but I was the worst that there ever was, until God made some changes in my life.”

Scrooge frowned. “Adam showed me that we live in a cold, cruel world apart from the paradise where God intended for us to live. Moses told me we’re doomed to wander away from God toward our own destruction. And now you’re telling me that believing in God, trying to be good and to keep God’s law doesn’t work?”

“That’s right.”

“But God gave his chosen people the law.”

“Right you are again. He gave them the law to point the way to his ultimate solution for their problem – their intractable wickedness. That was the purpose for everything else He did, too.”

“The birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, which we celebrate at Christmas,” Scrooge said.

“Exactly,” said Paul. “If not for Jesus – his miraculous birth and life, his death on the cross and his resurrection, there would be no hope for anyone. Life would truly be meaningless, as King Solomon wrote in his book Ecclesiastes. We would all be doomed. Because we have all disobeyed like Adam, and we have failed to listen like the people Moses shepherded.”

“I think I understand, but I wonder how to get at the solution. I believe in God, I go to church fairly regularly and I feel good while the Christmas season is here, but I don’t feel the same after the excitement of the season is over. Tell me, how can I keep that feeling all year long?”

Paul smiled and put his arm around him as they walked the city sidewalk.

“Keeping that feeling, eh? It’s good to be joyous and have good cheer when we celebrate Christ’s birth. But don’t think of that as something that happens for one day, or for a couple of weeks out of the year. Think of what we’re doing now – walking and talking as friends, one step at a time.”

They walked a little way further.

“Feelings are fine. But try not to get too wrapped up in them,” Paul continued. “They serve their purpose, but faith and belief in God is not a feeling. It is a response to what God has done for us. Salvation through Jesus Christ is a free gift from God – God’s grace extended to us, who don’t deserve it. Simply believe in Jesus Christ — God who became a man and lived on earth. And repent – that just means to turn away from your wrongdoings. Then believe. Put your trust in God, have faith in Him, listen to Him, and obey Him.

“Seek Him with all your heart and talk to Him just like you are talking with me, personally. Then walk with Him and talk with Him every day. He’s there for you. Through the completed work of Jesus Christ and through the constant presence of the Holy Spirit, He loves you and will never turn his back on you. The Spirit is God’s guarantee of our hope in Jesus Christ, you know.”

“Grace, repentance, salvation, faith, hope, love — this is all coming at me so fast,” Scrooge said. “I don’t know what to think.”

Paul looked around at the fantastic city that they walked through, as hurried people and rushing cars passed them by. He nodded and shrugged his shoulders.

“Someday you should watch the film ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” Paul said. “In it, George Bailey finds that if he had never been born, the world lacks something significant. Just think about if the world lacked the birth of Jesus Christ into it! But then I forget that you don’t have films or television in your time,” Paul mused.

“Anyway, don’t overthink it. Now I will tell you something else that was once a mystery but has since been made clear. Jesus Christ will return to earth, but not in the way He came the first time as a newborn baby,” Paul said.

“He will come in his full power as mighty ruler of all and his full authority as judge. Someday, this city and others like it will be changed permanently. All evil will be wiped out forever,” Paul said.

“That day, we will see that God has provided a place for all his children to live for all time that will be even better than that garden you saw earlier. It may be dark winter now, but there will be a springtime very soon.”

Paul put his hand on Scrooge’s shoulder and left. Scrooge found himself once again in his own drab, cold, dreary bedroom in London.

He looked in his hand. In it was the worn book that Paul had carried — a Bible. He opened it and written on the first page were the signatures of Adam, Moses and Paul. Paul had added these words: “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.”

Scrooge fell to his knees in the predawn darkness.

“Ah, Sovereign Lord, I have missed the true meaning of Christmas all these years – even these past few,” he said. “I thought I had found it, but all I had attained was a temporary feeling that soon fades. Please forgive a miserly old sinner and let me walk with you for the rest of whatever days I have remaining.”

And his heart felt warm and his soul felt as light as springtime, although it was now the morning of January 25, and the snow was still falling cold and wet in the dark streets outside. He felt like going for a walk and talking with a newly found friend. Then perhaps he would pay a visit to his old friend Bob Cratchit.

And so he did.

Ken Drenten is creator and editor of Dusty-Tires.com, a travel blog for out-of-the-ordinary places in Ohio.

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