God sends each one of us into the world with
some very special work to do. We may never know what that work is during our
life here on earth but God will surely tell us in the next.
To accomplish this work God plants us within a
vineyard. There are rich vineyards and poor vineyards, loving family vineyards
and lonely homeless vineyards. But regardless of the vineyard, we are sent here
to bear fruit for our loving Father in heaven.
We are all called to be saints regardless of
the vineyard in which we live out our life on earth. And there are great saints
in every vineyard. My friend Fox lived in one of God’s vineyards.
It was different from the one we live in here in Tenafly but God was still the
landlord.
About eight years ago [in 1986] I was searching
real hard to find Jesus, to understand what faith in Jesus really meant to me.
To my surprise I found Jesus in a wheelchair. He didn’t look like any of his
pictures though. He had one leg, was African American and kept his hair in
dreadlocks. But it was Jesus. That little piece of Christ within Fox reached
out and touched that little piece of Christ within me – and there was
recognition.
When I first met Fox he was sleeping at the
George Washington Bridge bus terminal. I offered him coffee and a sandwich and
asked him his name. He said ‘Fox’. A few weeks later I saw him again, asleep in
a cardboard box outside the terminal. I poured him a cup of coffee and gently
woke him up. ‘Fox, Fox,’ I called. He opened his eyes, smiled at me and said,
‘You remembered my name.’
Over the years we became friends. But I always
left Fox with sadness and conflict: I was going home to my family and my home
in Tenafly but my friend would be spending another night in a cardboard box.
Fox cared about other people and he cared about
me. My friend Carol, from our outreach team, reminded me how we offered Fox an
extra sandwich, our last one, one morning last winter; and how he told us that
there was another homeless person sleeping in a corner of the terminal that we
had missed who needed it more than he did. One day last year I was dragging
myself up the subway ramp after work. Fox looked at me and said that he was
worried about me because I looked so burnt out. Fox who had nothing but a
squeaky wheelchair, a taped-up Walkman and a plastic bag was worried about me
who had so much.
I really loved Fox. There will be an emptiness
in my life now that he’s gone. But I truly believe that I will see him again –
in a place where neither he nor I nor anyone could ever be homeless.
If any of us had been in the tunnel leading
from the subway exit up to the bus terminal early on the morning of April 16 we
might have heard a squeaky clatter. And if we looked up that tunnel, we might
have caught a glimpse of Fox wheeling his chair along side of Jesus as they
made their way to the escalator. And if we looked through the eyes of our
hearts, we might have seen Jesus lift Fox out of his wheelchair as they made their way up the escalator to catch a bus for heaven. Fox isn't homeless anymore.
May 25, 1994
Church of Our Lady of Mount Carmel, Tenafly, NJ
………………………………………………………………………………..
Readers
of this blog might enjoy these books by Deacon Lex. Both are available on
Amazon.com:
Just to Follow My Friend: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday
Life
Synchronicity as the Work of the Holy Spirit: Jungian Insights for
Spiritual Direction and Pastoral Ministry
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