The Season for Miracles — Wanda Luttrell

Lydia Steinberg knew her husband, Yaacov, was dead. She had held shiva for him almost two years ago. So why was his voice speaking to her now from the silence of their empty shop? She had spent every Christmas season for the past fifty years here on this small-town mall offering unique Old World antiques to the customers of Steinberg's, but this was the first season she had heard voices when only she and Samson, the cat, were there. She would know Yaacov's voice anywhere, but that other voice--was it the voice of the Mayeem Khayeem, the Living Water Yaacov had discovered just before he died? Then there were the miracles, one nes gadol right after the other. Some came in answer to her needs; some met the needs of others. The evicted mother and child who came into the shop to get warm, the little boy with $1.87 seeking an expensive gift for his Grandma, the homeless man eating from the trash barrel, the suicidal café owner down the street, the alcoholic ringing the bell over the Salvation Army kettle, the would-be robbers, the man with dementia insisting on buying a gift for his dead wife, the pregnant girl who almost had her baby in the shop--all were desperate, and she was allowed to participate in a miracle for every one of them. Never before had she even seen a true nes gadol. Yaacov's voice suggested that was because she had not believed in miracles--not until this wonderful miraculous season.