by Mary Bartels Bray
Copyrighted June 1965 in Guideposts
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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 till 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 for now, he was welcome 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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