The first time I saw him, he was slowly trudging up the hill behind the chapel. His rich brown chocolate skin looked as if it were melting and dripping off in the early September heat. It was very hot that day, close to 100 degrees, I’d say, and humid. Typical early September weather in Arkansas. He was wearing a short sleeve tee-shirt with some sort of resort logo on the front, advertising a summer vacation, long past, the kind of old tee you use to shine your car after you wash it. He also had on a pair of gray sweatpants that seemed to be glued to him. It first glance, I thought they were too small but it occurred to me that they were just stuck to his sweaty legs.
My eyes slide quickly over his odd attire because it was his feet that had first attracted my attention. As he came toward me, he was walking with a very strange-looking sort of shuffle.
Right foot. Tip-toe. Slide, SLAP!
Left foot. Tip-toe. Slide, SLAP!
His ridiculous gait reminded me of the way my sons used to walk when they were toddlers and they paraded around the house in their daddy’s shoes.
Just before he got to the top of the hill we met. His eyes briefly met mine. He smiled and nodded in the gentlemanly sort of way that seems to be characteristic of men of his generation. I mumbled a "Hello" back to him, but quickly dropped my eyes to the ground, embarrassed because he had caught me rudely staring at him. I don’t think he noticed. He just passed on by with a determined look on his face, as if it were taking all of his strength and will to continue up the hill.
I glanced back over my shoulder and that was when I first focused in on his shoes. He was wearing sandals – not the kind men wear with wide toes and broad leather straps – No, he was wearing ladies sandals! They were pretty and narrow and pointy with a bit of a heel in the back, and they were at least three sizes too small for his feet. His toes were squished down into them as far as they would go, but still his heel hung from the back an inch or two and the sling, having been slit with a knife, bounced wildly around his ankles. With each step he slid his dusty feet into the toe of the shoe to keep it from flying off and threw all of his weight down quickly, trying not to hit his bare heel on the rocky ground.
With a sigh and a sad shake of my head, I continued on down the hill, back toward the beehive of activity in the main courtyard where the volunteers were trying to organize the evacuees into orderly lines, (without much success, I might add). Then I felt it. I felt a teensy tiny prick in my heart. I’m not sure that I knew it right then, but I can say with a certainty now that the prick was from the hand of the Lord. It was a prick of compassion. It was a prick that broke through a lifetime of preconceived ideas. It was a prick that demanded action.
I had a choice to make.