He was a presence, hanging out with a ragamuffin gang of hippies, a bunch of darned kids, actually. He was a scavenger. A dreamer. A teller of fortunes. A magic man.
I can see him now, walking along a row of hungry people, divvying up a bit of fish or some broken pieces of barley loaf he’d scrounged up from somewhere. “You’ve come so far,” he’d say. “I’m glad to see you. How are you?” He was a tough-love, bleeding heart kinda guy with a healing touch and a listening ear.
I learned a little bit more about him when my friend, Michelle, made a medical missionary trip to a West Indian village so remote that pack mules carried the group of doctors and dentists, interns and technicians up steep and rocky slopes to a makeshift clinic.
“Pay attention,” the leader had said. “How you treat these villagers may be even more important than the medical care they receive. Be a presence in the ordinary. Be Jesus.” Michelle realized fully what that meant as patients began to arrive. Like a pregnant mom who’d walked four miles to get there with a toddler on each hip. Like a man who begged to have his teeth pulled because they were sure to be rotten before the missionaries returned. While they were there, they completed gynecological exams with a flashlight on their hands and knees before a low-slung cot. They cleaned surgical equipment at the same sink babies were washed in and fish were cleaned. They healed; they listened.
Somehow, this brings me to my friend, Glenda. She was a presence too. I got to know her the day my husband died. You see, hers had died too the year before. We were sitting on the front porch in the dark as we watched her come, her blondish-red hair like a halo, illuminated by street lights.
She was a steam engine in motion. She had come to be Jesus. In the months that followed, she was. After my family left, she stood by my back door the first time I entered my house alone. She came to get me for walks around town; she pulled me from my empty house to play Dominoes.
And like Jesus, she was a story teller, her impish grin stretching wide across her freckled face as she began. I especially like the one about her grandpa who was standing in the second story doorway of their family’s barn when his dentures fell into a pile of hog manure below. He fished them out of the muck and took them to the house, got out some Pepsodent and brushed them, got them to his mouth, brushed them again, got them to his mouth, brushed them again…
Or the one about the night she was fast asleep when she felt something tangling her long hair. She woke her husband who said, “aw it’s nothing, it was a dream, it was your imagination, go back to sleep.” The next morning the kids discovered a mouse in the bathroom with a barrette on his foot.
She decorated her Christmas tree in red, white and blue. She planted gardens with enough resulting produce to feed the entire town. She baked so many sweet rolls that her kids threatened to inscribe her tombstone with the words, Here lies Glenda’s buns.
We’ll see now, if they do it, the gang of followers she affectionately called her darned kids.
LaRayne Topp
I can see him now, walking along a row of hungry people, divvying up a bit of fish or some broken pieces of barley loaf he’d scrounged up from somewhere. “You’ve come so far,” he’d say. “I’m glad to see you. How are you?” He was a tough-love, bleeding heart kinda guy with a healing touch and a listening ear.
I learned a little bit more about him when my friend, Michelle, made a medical missionary trip to a West Indian village so remote that pack mules carried the group of doctors and dentists, interns and technicians up steep and rocky slopes to a makeshift clinic.
“Pay attention,” the leader had said. “How you treat these villagers may be even more important than the medical care they receive. Be a presence in the ordinary. Be Jesus.” Michelle realized fully what that meant as patients began to arrive. Like a pregnant mom who’d walked four miles to get there with a toddler on each hip. Like a man who begged to have his teeth pulled because they were sure to be rotten before the missionaries returned. While they were there, they completed gynecological exams with a flashlight on their hands and knees before a low-slung cot. They cleaned surgical equipment at the same sink babies were washed in and fish were cleaned. They healed; they listened.
Somehow, this brings me to my friend, Glenda. She was a presence too. I got to know her the day my husband died. You see, hers had died too the year before. We were sitting on the front porch in the dark as we watched her come, her blondish-red hair like a halo, illuminated by street lights.
She was a steam engine in motion. She had come to be Jesus. In the months that followed, she was. After my family left, she stood by my back door the first time I entered my house alone. She came to get me for walks around town; she pulled me from my empty house to play Dominoes.
And like Jesus, she was a story teller, her impish grin stretching wide across her freckled face as she began. I especially like the one about her grandpa who was standing in the second story doorway of their family’s barn when his dentures fell into a pile of hog manure below. He fished them out of the muck and took them to the house, got out some Pepsodent and brushed them, got them to his mouth, brushed them again, got them to his mouth, brushed them again…
Or the one about the night she was fast asleep when she felt something tangling her long hair. She woke her husband who said, “aw it’s nothing, it was a dream, it was your imagination, go back to sleep.” The next morning the kids discovered a mouse in the bathroom with a barrette on his foot.
She decorated her Christmas tree in red, white and blue. She planted gardens with enough resulting produce to feed the entire town. She baked so many sweet rolls that her kids threatened to inscribe her tombstone with the words, Here lies Glenda’s buns.
We’ll see now, if they do it, the gang of followers she affectionately called her darned kids.
LaRayne Topp
RSS Feed
