Our
house was directly across the street from the clinic
entrance of Johns 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 finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk
with him a few minutes. It didn't take a 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
prefaced
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 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. Grown-ups are
bothered by my
face, but children don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome
to come again.
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 am
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 illness would have been
easier to
bear. I know our family will always 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 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.
