You have heard about a great many people who did something with their lives. It is only fit and proper that you read a little about those who didn’t. Millions started doing something significant, and then stopped doing anything worthwhile permanently. These, by their very numbers, are respectable, and are therefore entitled to be heard—not in a loud voice, but a modest one; not a boastful one, but an apologetic one. They ought not be allowed much space among people who did something with their lives. I concede that. But they ought at least to be allowed to explain the process by which they didn’t do anything. Surely, this sort of revelation has some value.
I must have been 5-years old, because it was before I went to school I think. We lived in Wharton, Texas. I can’t remember the date exactly. How long ago that was. Sixty years.
I went to Wharton several years ago to visit the neighborhood where we lived for six months or so. I found our old house. It was still there. A tiny rectangle shaped clapboard house, painted white but not fresh. The weedy vacant lot next door was still there. And just like then there were no trees around. The garage was detached from the house and sagged a little. There was still just a gravel drive up to the garage. The house seemed locked up and I wondered if anyone lived there, but I didn’t go up to the door and knock. After all what would I say? “Hello, I lived here long ago.”
The thing that struck me the most was the hill going up to our neighbors house. It wasn’t a hill at all, just a slight incline instead. But to a little boy a slight incline is a hill.
As I said, I think I was five-years old at the time. I could have be six, but almost certainly not four. I was standing out in the front of the house for some reason. I don’t remember my mother being there. Or my father. Or my brother. I remember being alone. Another example of how time fades memory, for surely I wasn’t alone at that age.
A garbage truck pulled up to empty our garbage can. A man hopped off the rear of the truck and headed for me. He wore grease-smeared overalls; he was slim, almost gaunt. He had a two or three day stubble flexed with gray. He was sweating profusely and smelled like rotten eggs and mildewed vegetables.
“Little boy,” he said. “Would you please run and get me a drink of water? I’m very thirsty.”
I ran to the house and entered the back door. What kind of glass was I going to use? Certainly not the good glasses or even the jam glasses. This man was old and sweaty. He couldn’t drink out of the good glasses. I began looking in the bottom kitchen cabinets for something appropriate for the grubby, stinky man to drink out of. I looked and looked. I needed to find something. At the same time, for some reason, I didn’t want to face that man again. Finally, I found a chipped Mason jar and filled it with water. I ran back to the street. The garbage truck and the man were gone. I stood out in the front yard holding that Mason jar filled with water. I held it for a long time.
I looked down the street, wondering if the man ever got his water. I stood there holding the water, knowing that I had not done anything and the thing that I had not done was very significant.
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For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Matthew 25:3-36
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