The Old Man

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
outpatients 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
8-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 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.. 
    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 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 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 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 we 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 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) 

Will You Get a New Body?

...flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
nor does the perishable inherit the imperishable.
Behold, I tell you a mystery; we will not all sleep,
but we will all be changed, in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet; for the
trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised
imperishable, and we will be changed.
For this perishable must put on the imperishable,
and this mortal must put on immortality.

Only true believers - those baptized into Christ by
the Holy Spirit - will be changed. This is a spiritual
baptism, just like the "baptism now saves you" in
1 Peter 3:21 is spirit - rather than water - baptism.
Noah and his family stayed dry!