Make not a house of merchandise

I'm doing a piece on the Georgia War Veterans Home in Milledgeville, which is closing one of its wings this weekend. About 80 veterans had to find somewhere else to live.

One of them is Thomas Roach, whose 80th birthday is Friday. Mr. Roach makes his own Christmas decorations, and he would put them up at the home each year. He strings all these lights together and hot glues them into every day items, usually glasses or those little plastic cups the home puts medicine in.

Sometimes it takes him a whole day just to make one decoration. He said Christmas is his favorite holiday. And, as much as we may complain about the economy, or the other problems in our lives, he reminded me how blessed most of us are in America.

"I can remember coming up, the hard times, we were lucky to get a piece of peppermint candy (for Christmas)," he said. "Nowadays, the kids, they have Christmas year-round."



One of the decorations included a tiny Bible attached to a piece of wood. As it happened, the Bible was open to John 2, which tells the story of Jesus confronting the money changers in the Temple.

And found in the temple those that sold oxen and sheep and doves, and the changers of money sitting: And when he had made a scourge of small cords, he drove them all out of the temple, and the sheep, and the oxen; and poured out the changers' money, and overthrew the tables; And said unto them that sold doves, Take these things hence; make not my Father's house an house of merchandise.