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
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 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 know him, perhaps their illness’ would have been easier to bear.
I know our family will always be grateful to have know 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
seet 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.
– Author Unknown
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