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Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of
John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the
upstairs rooms to out-patients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the
door. I opened it to see a truly awful looking man. "Why, he's hardly
taller than my eight-year-old," I thought as I stared at the stooped,
shriveled body. But the appalling thing was his face -- lopsided from
swelling, red and raw.
Yet his voice was pleasant as he said, "Good evening. I've come to see
if you've a room for just one night. I came for a treatment this morning
from the eastern shore, and there's no bus til morning."
He told me he'd been hunting for a room since noon but with no success,
no one seemed to have a room. "I guess it's my face... I know it looks
terrible, but my doctor says with a few more treatments . . ."
For a moment I hesitated, but his next words convinced me: "I could
sleep in this rocking chair on the porch. My bus leaves early in the
morning."
I told him we would find him a bed, but to rest on the porch. I went
inside and finished getting supper. When we were ready, I asked the old
man if he would join us. "No thank you. I have plenty." And he held up a
brown paper bag.
When I had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him
a few minutes. It didn't take long time to see that this old man had an
oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he fished for a
living to support his daughter, her five children, and her husband, who
was hopelessly crippled from a back injury. He didn't tell it by way of
complaint; in fact, every other sentence was preface with a thanks to
God for a blessing.
He was grateful that no pain accompanied his disease, which was
apparently a form of skin cancer. He thanked God for giving him the
strength to keep going. At bedtime, we put a camp cot in the children's
room for him. When I got up in the morning, the bed linens were neatly
folded and the little man was out on the porch.
He refused breakfast,
but just before he left for his bus, haltingly, as if asking a great
favor, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have
a treatment? I won't put you out a bit. I can sleep fine in a chair."
He paused a moment and then added, "Your children made me feel at home.
Grownups are bothered by my face, but children don't seem to mind. "I
told him he was welcome to come again.
And on his next trip he arrived a
little after seven in the morning. As a gift, he brought a big fish and
a quart of the largest oysters I had ever seen. He said he had shucked
them that morning before he left so that they'd be nice and fresh. I
knew his bus left at 4:00 a.m. and I wondered what time he had to get up
in order to do this for us.
In the years he came to stay overnight with us there was never a time
that he did not bring us fish or oysters or vegetables from his garden.
Other times we received packages in the mail, always by special
delivery; fish and oysters packed in a box of fresh young spinach or
kale, every leaf carefully washed. Knowing that he must walk three miles
to mail these, and knowing how little money he had made the gifts doubly
precious.
When I received these little remembrances, I often thought of a comment
our next-door neighbor made after he left that first morning. "Did you
keep that awful looking man last night? I turned him away! You can lose
roomers by putting up such people!"
Maybe we did lose roomers once or
twice. But oh! If only they could have known him, perhaps their
illnesses would have been easier to bear. I know our family always will
be grateful to have known him; from him we learned what it was to accept
the bad without complaint and the good with gratitude to God.
Recently I was visiting a friend who has a greenhouse, As she showed me
her flowers, we came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden
chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But to my great surprise, it was
growing in an old dented, rusty bucket.
I thought to myself, "If this
were my plant, I'd put it in the loveliest container I had!" My friend
changed my mind. "I ran short of pots," she explained, "and knowing how
beautiful this one would be, I thought it wouldn't mind starting out in
this old pail. It's just for a little while, till I can put it out in
the garden."
She must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining
just such a scene in heaven. "Here's an especially beautiful one," God
might have said when he came to the soul of the sweet old fisherman. "He
won't mind starting in this small body."
All this happened long ago-and now, in God's garden, how tall this
lovely soul must stand.
The LORD does not look at the things man looks at.
Man looks at the outward appearance, but the LORD looks at the heart.
(1 Samuel 16:7b)
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发表于 2007-9-21 18:44
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