[cwohio]

The Old Fisherman - Author Unknown


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 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 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.


God does not look at the things man looks at. Man looks at the
outward appearance, but God looks at the heart." (1 Samuel 16:7b)