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 outpatients 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 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 a
long time to see that this old man had an over sized
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 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 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 illness'
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."
So make a smile today! ;D