Evening Prayer and Footsteps in the November Rain

It was a cold late-November Tuesday when Minh stepped down at the crossroads with a single frayed backpack and wet shoes. All the rehearsed speeches of apology he had practiced on the six-hour bus ride vanished in his throat as he walked down the dark lane. He told himself he would only walk past the fence once to make sure his mother was healthy, then catch the morning bus away.

Yet as he rounded the bamboo hedge, his breath caught. Every house along the lane lay dark and shuttered against the drizzle—except one. Behind the familiar wooden frame of his childhood window burned a steady golden flame, casting the silhouette of a small crucifix onto the rain-streaked glass.

Standing beneath the eaves, he heard his mother’s quiet voice finishing the Hail Holy Queen inside, adding the same petition she had whispered for two thousand five hundred nights: “Lord, keep Minh safe wherever he sleeps tonight, and bring him home when he is tired.” Before his trembling fingers even touched the wood, the front door opened.

No lecture met him on the porch, no accounting of wasted years. Only two frail arms wrapping a warm towel around his soaked shoulders and the smell of hot ginger tea on the stove. Sitting beside that little beeswax candle, Minh finally understood how God the Father watches the road every evening for His children.