The heavy frost crackled under our feet as we made our way into the unpainted wooden house. I would have thought it abandoned if it weren’t for the small stream of smoke coming from the mouth of a crooked old chimney whose bricks were acting like an older man’s teeth. The gaps in and around the door and the lack of an enclosed foundation meant that the little ram shackled structure was one that breathed. The problem, of course, was that at nine o’clock on this December morning breathing the freezing air was the opposite of what anyone wanted to do.
As we entered I felt that I might fall through the weak wood flooring but quickly forgot about falling as I surveyed the one-room house. A coal-burning stand-alone heat and cookstove were to the left of the room’s center and a single bed to the right of center with a wooden kitchen chair beside. The only other furnishings were some wooden drink crates stacked up beside the head of the bed and between it and the heater. As I looked in the dimly lit room, I still could not see a person on the small mattress piled high with quilts but assumed there was someone there, alone.
What immediately grabbed my attention even more than the sparse furnishings were the walls of the house. They had no insulation or sheetrock and were covered only with old yellow newspapers. The thin layer of the newsprint allowed the cracks and holes in the board to allow the sun and the cold entrance in the little room.
What brought my companion and me to the little shack that morning was an internship for a master's level course in Guidance and Counseling. This particular class had as a requirement that I work with a Social Services Caseworker for a week. The little house in the country was our first stop on the first day of the caseworker's weekly rounds. I had not prepared myself for the heartbreak of what I saw. As my supervisor gently spoke to the tiny person under the old quilts, I worried at the stove, which had warped over time allowing me to see glowing red embers peaking out of the heating chamber. On top of the potbellied stove was an opened can of beans and a small pot with water. The pintoes were for lunch, and the water to humidify the air in the room. On the stack of crates was a plastic spoon. The caseworker explained that the occupant’s grown son made sure his eighty-year-old mother had fire in her stove and something to eat before he went to work each day. She lived alone and spent her days as well as her nights in bed.
Peaking out from under the covers was the frail body of the house's owner. She had experienced many freezing nights alone. Between the wrap on her head and the blankets, a could see a deeply creased face, deep-set eyes, and a mouth sparsely occupied by teeth. “I’m all right,” she said when the gentle voice of the care worker asked how she was doing and if she needed anything. The county employee introduced me as I leaned in over the bed to get a closer look. “This is Mr. Rick Collins. He is a pastor from Chester and is studying at the University.”
Her ears seemed to prick as she tried to focus on my face and said, “Chester. And you a preacher?” “Yes, mam,” I replied. My next words were standard pastor issue. “May I pray for you?”
She answered more firmly this time, “Yes, please.” Along with my supervisor, I prayed and in my prayer, I prayed that God would protect her as she spent her days alone. As I said, “Amen,” in conclusion, she looked thoroughly at me with a look that might have been accompanied by taking my cheeks in her weathered old hands if she had been able. I had seen the look many times over the years when an older person with great reflection gave you a piece of their personal experience. “By myself,” she said, and then with even more strength, her frail voice lifted, “never alone! That is the story of God’s people small and great. We many times are by ourselves but never alone!
In all their distress he too was distressed, and the angel of his presence saved them. In his love and mercy he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. Isa. 63:9
Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world. James 1:27
God With Us!
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