making choices …

Now time stands before me, beck­on­ing to me, ask­ing that I decide what I want.

Money stands before me ask­ing — no, plead­ing for me to allow it to sit by my side.

Then friends, some closer than a brother and oth­ers as mere acquain­tances beg silently in their own minds for some­one to notice them and give them atten­tion that in one sense, they deserve.

Finally, I turn to look for any­one else who wishes to be with me, jby my side, ready to honor any wish my mind would desire.  That’s when I saw him –  a man stand­ing in the shadow of a tree, who now is step­ping for­ward into the glow of the street lamp, silently gaz­ing toward me.  His eyes, ten­der and still, speak vol­umes of the thoughts that are on his mind and love that is in his heart.  He steps toward me and places his left hand on my shoul­der, and extends his right hand to grab mine.  In a small-town, friendly ges­ture, I reach out as well and shake his hand.

The whole world sud­denly seemed to fade away, leav­ing only he and I together in the street, star­ing at each other, speechless.

It took no more than a split sec­ond for me to real­ize whom I had for­got­ten, but that short moment seemed like a life­time.  Twenty four years to be exact.  With con­scious­ness and mem­ory return­ing to the fore­ground of my mind I real­ize that I should have come to this man first, to ask him to walk with me and help me make these other, now rel­a­tively insignif­i­cant decisions.

For some rea­son, I recall com­ing to this man sev­eral times, need­ing help, but soon after for­get­ting to con­tinue grow­ing our friend­ship.  I hate to label myself as a hyp­ocrite, but I’ve never been fond of it when oth­ers do the same to me; befriend­ing me on the week­ends only, dur­ing the week com­pletely for­get­ting I even exist.  It seems as though now I’ve com­mit­ted a per­sonal evil against my fel­low man.  Actu­ally, gaz­ing into his eyes again I don’t think this can even be a man.  His com­pas­sion flows through his gaze like a fresh spring that, after rac­ing down a moun­tain­side, turns to a larger river and brings life to peo­ple, plants, ani­mals and entire civ­i­liza­tions.  Such grandeur from such a small source.  An infi­nite source.

I begin to rec­og­nize the back­ground fad­ing back into the scene, as time, money and friends take their right­ful place behind this man.  I noticed, as I dipped my head down to wipe away a tear, that this man car­ried no lug­gage, no phone, no com­puter and no — any­thing.  He was here by him­self.  He needs noth­ing else to accom­plish his mis­sion, and has open arms ready to take my bur­dens upon him­self.  I saw his hands were bruised and scarred.  I was able to see that these wounds were deep and must not have been prop­erly cared for when they occurred.  They’ve been there for awhile, but were not infected, and didn’t appear to bother the man.  “Per­haps he’s used to them by now,” I thought.  He’s car­ried so many things for so many peo­ple, I sup­pose he had more impor­tant things to worry about than him­self.  This is my kind of friend.

After a few more moments, I looked back up and caught his gaze again.  His hand released mine, and he sim­ply asked, “Do you trust me?”

“I do.”  I replied.  I couldn’t think of any rea­son not too.  He’s been there any time I needed him, regard­less of my atti­tude, actions or my for­get­ful­ness of him.  “I will.” I restated.  “Will you help me?”

“I will never leave you, nor for­sake you.” He promised.  He’s told me this before, yet I still for­get him.  He is so good to me.  God is so good.