[CS-FSLUG] A Beautiful Flower in a Broken Pot

[Fred A. Miller]

A 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 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) 

-- 
"As Internet technology itself vaults into new areas, so too does the
Microsoft monopoly and its tried-and-true bag of tricks."
-US Senator Orrin Hatch, (R) Utah