The story of this Fisherman clearly shows how mixed up humans are with their priorities in life . Any step towards knowledge or Salvation can only be taken after the humans re arrange their priorities or at least realise that their priorities are mixed up . Out of maya
Inspiring stories
The Fisherman
Our house was directly across the street from the clinic entrance of
John 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..."
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 spare 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.
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. Grown ups 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."
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Posted by: Shankar Sriram <shankar.sriram17@yahoo.com>
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