THE
OLD DENTED BUCKET
My house was directly across the street from the
clinic entrance of Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. I 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 not as tall as me, 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 I would find him a bed, but to rest on
the porch... I went inside and finished getting supper. When I was ready, I
asked the old man if he would join me "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 oversized heart crowded into that tiny body. He told me he
fished for a living to support his daughter, her 5 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...
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, "You made me feel at home. Grownups are bothered by
my face, but you don't seem to mind." I told him he was welcome to come
again.
And, on his next trip, he arrived a little after 7
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….
In the years he came to stay overnight, there was
never a time that he did not bring fish or oysters or vegetables from his
garden. Other times 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 3 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 I 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 I will always be grateful to have known him; from him I
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)
(1 Samuel 16:7b)
Friends are very special. They make you smile and
encourage you to succeed. They lend an ear and they share a word of praise.
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