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 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  prefaced 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
 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."
 (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.
Show your friends how much you care....
 Pass this on, and brighten someone's day.
     
       Nothing will happen if you do not decide to pass it along.
 The only  thing that will happen if you
DO pass it on, is that someone might  smile.

       Make someone smile today!



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