Beautiful Flower In A Broken Pot

Beautiful Flower In A Broken Pot


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
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 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 chrsanthemum,
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 (because
of you).


May you also see God's Blessings this day.