Yesterday, my wife and I visited with three people. It was a day of good cheer, humor, thankfulness, gratitude, even tears of joy. When we drove home, our spirits were so uplifted that we couldn't stop expressing our own thanksgiving, just to see such hope and enthusiasm in others.

After my quartet sang at a hospital for Martin Luther King's birthday, we went first to visit Rebecca. Rebecca lives alone, is in her 90's and has arthritis is so bad that she can barely walk across the room. She lives on the second floor and can no longer walk up and down the stairs. The only time she gets out now is to go to the doctor or the hospital. She has a chair with a power seat that lifts her up because it is almost impossible for her to get up out of a chair on her own. When we pushed the buzzer, her grandson came downstairs to unlock the door for us. He was there visiting her after having spent the morning visiting his father and his mother, who are both in hospitals, 50 miles away from each other. He had stopped in to see if there was anything he could pick up for his Grandma. When Rebecca saw us, she was so excited! We live 40 miles away from her, so we only get to visit her every couple of weeks. She was really bubbling over, and couldn't stop praising the Lord because her arthritis has quieted down for a day or two and she was so thankful to have a day without extreme pain. We asked her how her son Alonzo was doing... her Grandson's Father. She said that he was doing allright. He is in the local hospital, because he has "Sugar" (diabetes) and his ankle is infected. For the last five years, he's been fighting the infection, and every time they go in, they end up having to amputate a toe. He lives downstairs from his Mother, and she counts on him to help her. All she knew was that they were fighting the latest infection in his foot with antibiotics, and that they were going to have to do more cutting on his foot. We told her that we were going to go visit him after we left her, and we did.

When we walked up to his hospital room, a curtain was drawn around Alonzo's bed, and a nurse was tending him. We stood outside for a few minutes while she was caring for him, and we felt good. Alonzo was in high spirits, kidding around with the nurse, laughing often.
It made us feel good, that he was so full of energy, life and laughter. When the nurse finally pulled the curtains back and said we could come in, there was Alonzo lying on the bed with his legs exposed. His left leg had a big bandage around it, just above where his foot used to be. They amputated his foot, above the ankle the day before. He was in a lot of pain, and had a painkiller hooked up intervenously so that when the pain flared up, he could press a button and inject more pain killer into his body, and he had an oxygen tank hooked up to his nose with tubes. It was a shock to us to walk in to see him that way, because when the screen was drawn in front of him, he sounded like he was fine. And truth is, he WAS fine. He was hopeful that they'd gotten all the infection out, and looking forward to being fitted with a prosthetic foot in a few weeks. His only real concern was how he was going to tell his Mother, Rebecca. Other than that, he was in high spirits.

After we left the hospital, we went to visit our friend Joe's sister Anna, who had her gallbladder removed last week. When Anna opened the door, she clasped her hands together and started crying, she was so joyful to see us. She still has quite a bit of pain from the operation, and has to walk slowly. Sitting down and getting up is very painful for her, but she is so excited that they are removing the stitches in a couple of days. Her only concern is how Joe is taking all of this. She kept telling me how much Joe thinks of me, and asked me to promise that I would always be his brother. She is very concerned about who will watch out for Joe after she is gone. Joe and his wife lost their daughter seven or eight years ago, and he never quite got over that, and then he's had his own serious health problems in the last year. I assured her that as long as I was alive, I would watch over Joe because he is my brother. All the time, Anna would come over and hug my wife and me, calling us her brother and sister, tears streaming down her face. She told us not to be concerned, because they were tears of joy.

We visited three people, all of whom are in pain, can only walk with trouble, can't go outside without someone taking them and have very questionable futures. And yet, they were probably the three most thankful people we met that day. What do they all have in common? Humility. I read a great definition of humility recently. "Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less."

Amen.

Jerry