My family home was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. We lived downstairs and rented the upstairs rooms to outpatients at the clinic.
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see an awful looking man. I stared at the stooped, shrivelled body. His face, lopsided from swelling, was 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. "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".
When I had 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 wasn't complaining; in fact, every other sentence was prefaced with 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 favour, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? 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.
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 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. 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 showed me her flowers. We came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. "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''.
"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".
One summer evening as I was fixing supper, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see an awful looking man. I stared at the stooped, shrivelled body. His face, lopsided from swelling, was 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. "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".
When I had 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 wasn't complaining; in fact, every other sentence was prefaced with 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 favour, he said, "Could I please come back and stay the next time I have a treatment? 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.
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 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. 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 showed me her flowers. We came to the most beautiful one of all, a golden chrysanthemum, bursting with blooms. But it was growing in an old dented, rusty bucket. "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''.
"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".
No comments:
Post a Comment