Wisdom from Africa opens a new chapter

I've been feeling guilty for weeks. While we were visiting my hometown in the United States for Christmas, I drove past a young man who was standing by the road in the cold holding a sign that said "Need Work. "His clothes did not look warm enough for the-5 C temperature.

Over the years, I've accumulated more warm jackets than I can possibly use, so while driving by I thought that I should come back and bring him one. But, I never did it. I certainly did not honor the spirit of Christmas, which is supposed to be focused on showing love for one's fellow men and women, especially the more unfortunate among us.

Coincidentally, at the same time, I had been reading, mostly rereading, the First Ladies' Detective Agency novels of Alexander McCall Smith. The sequential novels tell the story of Precious Ramotswe, a woman in the southern African country of Botswana who opens a detective agency in the capital city of Gaborone.