A scrap of hope
April 14
He was a bum from the Bowery in New York City.
Throat slashed, a charity case, one among hundreds, he was a derelict being admitted to the busy Bellevue Hospital. The Bowery—usually the last stop before the morgue—is a synonym of filth, drugs, booze and terrible loneliness. But who really cared? He was just a derelict whose name and age was incorrect; he was really 38, not 39. When you are a bum from the Bowery no one cares about your name or age.
It was a cold winter morning, and no one really cared about the bum with his throat slashed in the predawn hours. The doctors and nurses had seen so many like him, so they simply went about their job. I wonder if they had known who he was, would it have made a difference? I hope so!
For him the Bowery had become the dead-end street of an incredible life. He was simply one among many who existed in the cheap, stinking flop houses of that day. Like all the others, he lived for his next bottle of booze. His health was gone—he looked twice his age, but nobody cared.
Long before the sun came up on this icy January morning, this shell of a man, staggered to the bathroom in a drunken stupor, and fell against the wash basin. It shattered, and he was found naked and bleeding with a deep gash across his throat. A doctor was called who used black sewing thread someone found to suture the wound, after all, this was the Bowery. The man begged for a drink. Another bum shared a drink from a half empty bottle of rum to help calm his fear. He was dumped into a paddy wagon, taken to Bellevue Hospital and simply dropped off. He languished for three days unable to eat anything, and then he died... still unknown! Or?
A friend from the Bowery looking for him was sent to the morgue. There, among many others who were forsaken, forgotten, nameless and unwanted, he was identified by a tag on his toe. His only belongings consisted of a ragged, dirty coat with 38 cents in one pocket and a scrap of paper in the other. Just 38 cents—enough for a cheap drink and scrap of paper with five words, “Dear friends and gentle hearts.” Maybe the words to a song, someone thought. But nobody really cared.
But, maybe that drunken derelict still believed he had the heart of a genius. For once in a distant past, long before his drunken death at 38, he had written songs that had made the world sing, like Camptown Races, OH Susanna!, Beautiful Dreamer, Jeanie with the Light Brown Hair, and hundreds more that are rooted in our American heritage. Stephen Foster, a genius or a drunken derelict.
Deep within many lives that have been broken and scared by this world, there is a tiny scrap of hope. Hope that Fanny Crosby wrote about in a song entitled, Rescue the Perishing. Listen to her words as you read them:
Touched by a loving heart,
Wakened by kindness,
Chords that are broken,
Will vibrate once more.
These days have sucked the hope out of many lives and families. Yet there is still a scrap of hope in some, and they sometimes slip in the pews of Heritage church looking! They may have a song inside but just cannot get it out. Let’s help them through love, acceptance and friendliness ,and perhaps a life will sing again.
Together with God,
Woodrow Hudson
Interim Pastor
|
