In the darkened window of an Amsterdam antique shop one evening, I saw a lively bronze-colored cherub hanging in mid-air and blowing a trumpet. It struck my fancy, and next day I purchased the happy creature, hoping it could dangle somewhere in our Virginia home.
It arrived just before Christmas—when the American post offices were delivering more than one billion pieces of mail a day—and my treasured plaster cherub had a broken arm. Even my best repair work left traces of the fissure.
Yet the cherub still keeps sounding the trumpet, and its countenance beams. I like to think that it first learned to play the trumpet on Easter morning, and that the joy of Christ’s resurrection strikes so deep a hope that not even a broken arm can silence the song of triumph.
When my own limbs are brittler and my heart is heavy, I trust that—like my cherub with a broken arm—I will remember there’s a trumpet to be sounded. Maybe somebody will come along in the darkness and say: “That’s the note of joy I’ve been waiting to hear. I want it—cherub and all.”
