“Jesus stopped . . .” – Mark 10:49
The father of one of my classmates died while we were in high school. He had cancer I think, but I was not paying much attention at the time, as that particular classmate was not someone I knew very well, the sort of guy who kept to himself mostly and not part of my circle of friends. I had not thought of him in years, until I recently learned that he too had passed away, the news of which quite unexpectedly brought me to tears, not so much from grief as from shame. It had to do with this vivid recollection I had of a conversation my own dad had with me following my classmate’s father’s death, about how deeply he had loved his father and the grief he must be suffering, urging me to take the opportunity to reach out and show some compassion. I never did – never stopped and took the time.
Several years ago, my late beloved friend and mentor John Castle was on his way to his lake house in East Texas when he pulled into a convenience store at the edge of Dallas to fill up with gas. There he encountered a homeless man named Shorty. Perhaps Shorty was panhandling, and perhaps John gave him a handout, I never heard him say for sure. What did happen for certain, though, was that John stopped and took time to engage in conversation with Shorty and learn something about his life. Soon John began to stop regularly at that convenience store where Shorty hung out and they would always talk. As was his nature, John saw Shorty not as a homeless person, but a fellow human being – and a friend.
Jesus and his disciples were leaving Jericho one day when they passed by a blind beggar named Bartimaeus sitting on the side of the road begging. “Jesus, Son of David,” he shouted, “have mercy on me!” “Many rebuked him and told him to be quiet,” the scriptures tell us, but the blind man kept shouting, “Son of David, have mercy on me!” Suddenly, it says, “Jesus stopped . . .”
Like Jesus, when he encountered Shorty at the convenience store that day, my friend John stopped. Yet, even at my father’s urging I couldn’t stop long enough to comfort a grieving classmate? Shame on me! Jesus must have wept that day. And now, sixty years later I finally wept too. All I can do now is pray that my classmate had had a good life . . . and pray that I had learned a valuable lesson – to stop for those in need.