Short: Hearth of Gold

The soft and weary snow covered the sleeping earth as night’s cold, merciless hours drove the mercury lower and lower. Here and there, a tree might shake off a few dusty flakes from its limbs and send gentle reminders of last Sunday’s terrible storm to earth, but tonight not a cloud polluted the heavens, and the stars shone in all their splendor.

Death-like silence pervaded all, and the glimmering gods above seemed poised, as though they too were ready to fall upon the earth.

I gazed into heaven, thanking God for the warmth of the home I knew, shivering, bundled up, holding that warmth inside me as I tasted the bitter cold. I could see the light of the hearth, caught it in the corner of my eye, and so my thoughts returned to earth. That good, warm, blazing hearth, which is the heart of every home, shone through a window, its light stretching itself over the icy ground in a lane of pure gold.

In heaven, the streets are made of gold, and I can only guess, as I trudged through that deep snow, trudged through that lane made of light, that the golden roads up there are the outpouring of many a loving home joined into a great and gleaming river.