An Old Man On A Bench

As I was walking down a sidewalk, heading into a Kroger, I saw an old man sitting on a bench. He had a red and blue plaid newsboy cap on and his face was chiseled with decades of time. If his face were a phonograph record it would play the blues.

The bench once had advertising painted on it, but the peeling green paint on its slats made it indiscernible. The multicolor lettering was long gone, even its outline was now lost  - only flakes of paint here and there bore testimony to soap, or soda, or aspirin; the purchase of which promised to make life better - the bench was weathered and warped, the old man was weathered and bent.

His eyes saw me, he was aware of what was immediately surrounding him – but he was looking at something else, something I couldn’t see – his soul was looking through his eyes, beyond what I and other passersby could see. I had a sense that he was there and yet wasn’t there. I had a sense that I was intruding.

Reverently I said, “Good afternoon.”

He looked at me, through me, beyond me, and replied:

“When I die I will fly

And when I fly I will soar.

When I soar it will be above this old earth

And my troubles will be far below.”

I don’t think he was actually talking to me, I was just a witness in the sacred place of the old man, for I don’t think he was simply sitting on a bench; the bench was just a prop, a prop for a tired old soul in the tired old body of a tired old man.

2 Corinthians 5:1-5.