Wounded Warrior Outcast

Bob came to church every Sunday, but he didn't come in.  His old friend Gerald was the head usher, so Bob just  stuck his head in the door, waved at Gerald, and handed him a $5 bill.  Sometimes he'd slip into the foyer just long enough to hear the sermon, sometimes not, but always unseen, except by Gerald.  He knew his old friend would be waiting there for him.  Gerald didn't come into the sanctuary on any Sunday until Bob had made his visit.

A 1950 high school graduate, the annual listed him as both best-dressed and most likely to succeed.  Bright, and with family wealth behind him, he was set for college and career.  Korea came, and Bob went.  Bob came home stuck in a crippling mental disorder.  Shell-shocked.  No help available.

Healthy otherwise, with more money than he needed, Bob just existed.  Always dressed in the same sport coat and slacks, stained and soiled beyond belief, but hand washed at home.  A tie that had to be at least 40 years old.   Ancient shoes wrapped in duct-tape.  Shaggy hair, driving a 20 year old Ford.

I saw his car at the burger place one day, mid-afternoon, and went in to visit with him.  He was enjoying a burger.  We were the only customers, and the entire staff stared at us, wondering why in the world I was having a conversation with "that man".

Bob never asked for anything, lived almost like a walking-around-hermit, in the house of his parents in an older part of town.  He never missed a Sunday, and, in my experience, proved to be approachable only that one time. His only true link to the rest of the world was his friend, Gerald.

I am positive that God delights in Gerald!  And every one who does the same thing, reaching into the "fog" where one of God's children lives isolated, never letting go, and providing just one link.  Thank God for the "Geralds" around us.

Eileen Nearne

New parables emerge every day! It's amazing what you discover in the short biographies posted as obituaries. From The Week (www.theweek.com a weekly news-summary magazine), there's a listing on Eileen Nearne. She died at 89, a recluse. Local officials thought they would have to use a "pauper's grave" burial, but when they searched her apartment, they found an extraordinary trove of WWII memoriabilia.

March, 1944, she parachuted into France with a short-wave radio transmitter, and organized weapons drops to the French resistance. Caught, tortured by the Gestapo, she escaped and hid until liberation. From 1945 to 2010, she lived with disabilities caused by the torture and stress, becoming more reclusive. (Do a Goggle search on her name - amazing)

A veterans's organization paid for her funeral, attended by 350, including representatives from the British armed forces and the French consul-general.

The "parable" part of this? Under the quiet, reclusive surface of people just around you, inside every one of them, is a story perhaps known only to God and to ones who care enough to get close enough to discover it. (Related "quiet" stories among my neighbors: a D-Day paratrooper and a transport pilot for that day, and a B-17 pilot.)

Go back and read Luke's Gospel; Jesus continually gets close to people that others avoid, and discovers amazing qualities there.

The "moral of the story"? Do what He said, love your neighbor enough to really get to know your neighbor, and suddenly your own life is enriched beyond all your expectations.