The best Christmas gift I’ve ever received
It would make a terrible Christmas carol: if good King Wenceslas had looked out, he’d have seen Elliott Osowitt alone on Christmas Eve on his way to a hotel to kill himself with a gun.
No Feast of Stephen, and the only deep thing wasn’t the snow, but Osowitt’s thoughts about what had led him there.
He’d been kicked out of his house by a wife who had finally run out of patience after years of what he now describes as “loose living and immorality”. That won’t be making it into a carol any time soon, either.
Neither would Osowitt’s job: working for Heathen Tours, a company providing English tourists in the US with “sinful pleasures”. Osowitt had indulged in more than a few of those himself. It had led him to this grim Christmas, checking in to a cheerless room alone, with his gun ready.
But within that room was something that was about to change Osowitt’s life. The Gideon’s Bible opened to John 14:27: “Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
