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I first met Mrs. Elliott when a couple of friends and I delivered firewood to her house.

We were suppose to go to lunch that day so I was surprised when the two of them arrived in an old pick-up truck loaded with wood. “We have a stop to make,” Herb said as he slid to the middle of the seat.

Bev drove us to a tiny shack on 11th Street in my hometown. I had driven down that street many times, but had never paid any attention to the house we stopped at.

Bev got out, went to the door, and when an elderly woman who looked to be in her 80’s opened it I heard him say, “We have wood for you from the Lynchburg Covenant Fellowship.” Mrs. Elliott knew the name and all it stood for and without hesitation said. “Well, then, come on in.”

The three of us started unloading the wood. The house had three rooms with an old tin stove sitting in one corner of the small living room. That was all the heat Mrs. Elliott had. The night before she had gotten a neighbor to break up her chest of drawers so she would have enough wood to make it through the night.

We chatted off and on with her as we brought the wood in and stacked it beside the stove. When we finished and turned to leave Mrs. Elliott said, “Well, boys, I can’t thank you enough. I guess I would’ve frozen tonight without that wood.”

The three of us thanked her, said our good-byes, went out and got in the truck. But then we just sat there, almost as if we couldn’t move. I suppose we were trying to absorb the experience we had just had. Finally Herb said, “I think we were just in the presence of Jesus.”

Mrs. Elliott had worked all her life cleaning houses, but in her later years she was not physically able to continue. Her only income was Social Security. Her only source of medical help was Medicaid. The winter that year was particularly rough and she could not afford to buy wood for her old tin heater that burned it like paper. That’s why we took some to her, and others like her, all winter, and many winters after that.

I have never forgotten Mrs. Elliott.

I don’t know why she was poor. I don’t know what the circumstances of her life had been before I met her. Maybe she was an early example of the “nanny state” some people believe our country has become.

I don’t know about any of that. What I do know is that meeting her on a cold December day a long time ago changed my life.

And I believe it was because that was the day I met Jesus, and his name was Mrs. Elliott.