We love visiting with people. Whether they are active in the church, not members or have part member and part non-member families, we love them all. We are always struggling to find just the right message to leave during each of these visits. We pray before we leave, and Kathy is often preparing nice little cards with quotes from the Prophets or scriptures. What we did this week was unique and fun and tasty! Kathy offered to make dessert for our visit to a family out of town. She made this:
It's a flower planted in "dirt". Maybe you've seen this before. The flower is plastic (and cleaned off in advance). The dirt is crumbled chocolate cookies like Oreos. Beneath the dirt is chocolate pudding. And for good measure a little worm (gummy worm) is poking his head out of the dirt. After presenting each person their own little flower, as we started eating it (and their 7-year old son was super excited about it) I read the following story:
The
Old Fisherman
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
had finished the dishes, I went out on the porch to talk with him for a few
minutes. It didn't take 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 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.
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.
During
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 with 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 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, until I can put it out in the garden."
She
must have wondered why I laughed so delightedly, but I was imagining 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.
It was a wonderful evening and everyone enjoyed the dessert and the story. Kathy topped it all off by attaching a little scripture quote to each flower pot: "...for the Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart" 1 Samuel 16:7
