Bird in hand

Today I sold my car to two young Muslim men from Turkey. They are graduate students in two different fields, and one of them needed a good car. The other knows cars, and he knew that my Toyota Highlander was a very good choice.
The older of the two – the one who knows cars – is going home to Turkey in three weeks. He has finished his Ph.D., for which I congratulated him. We chatted more, and I learned more. I learned that his studies here had been interrupted by a medical emergency at home with one of his children. His younger child, about a year and a half old, had developed serious problems with his brain. The baby has microcephaly – his brain has not grown, and it never will. He is stuck at the 6-month stage of development. He will never be able to feed himself or walk or talk. They have seen many doctors in Istanbul and tried months of therapy; nothing really helps. The child will likely live a normal span, but will never be able to care for himself.

I have known other children with conditions like this. When I was a teenager I worked for several summers as a Candy-Striper – a young volunteer – in a State pediatric hospital in my home town. My favorite part of the job was caring for infants. The nurses were so busy that they could not afford the time to do more than minimal care. I had the luxury of time to rock the babies, dawdle over their baths and diaper changes, play with their toes and tickle their tummies. I got to see some of their first smiles and help them through the throes of formula changes.
One baby in particular captured my heart. Her name was Mary Ruth L. – only a few letters different from mine. She had been born with serious digestive problems, and her family was too poor to pay for the care she needed. She had essentially been abandoned and was a ward of the state. Many of the babies at the hospital were in this legal limbo.

But this little girl was lucky. Not only was she getting competent medical care, but she also had a nurse who had fallen in love with her. That nurse was married and longed for children, but was finding herself unable to conceive. Over the months that Mary Ruth lived in the hospital, the nurse grew to love her devotedly. She brought in stuffed animals and recordings of music for the baby to enjoy. When I gave Mary Ruth her bath or rocked her, I would play the tapes that the nurse had brought. One in particular became my favorite: “The Simon Sisters Sing for Children.” Carly Simon and her sister Lucy had made the recording when they were in their twenties – a dozen or so classic charming poems by Robert Lewis Stephenson, William Blake, and Edward Lear, sung in an exotic harmony and with simple instrumentation. My favorite was, “The Lamb” by William Blake.

Little Lamb, who made thee?
Dost thou know who made thee?

Gave thee life, & bid thee feed

by the stream & o'er the mead;

gave thee clothing of delight;

softest clothing, wooly, bright;

gave thee such a tender voice

making all the vales rejoice?

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

Little lamb, I'll tell thee,

Little lamb, I'll tell thee:

He is called by thy name,

for he calls himself a Lamb.

He is meek & he is mild;

He became a little child.

I a child, & thou a lamb,

we are called by his name:

Little lamb, God bless thee!

Little lamb, God bless thee!

The nurse who loved Mary Ruth lived near me, as it turned out, and so I kept in a little contact with her. I went over to her house one day and borrowed the LP so that I could make a cassette recording of it. I found out later that the nurse had adopted Mary Ruth, and that she was doing well. And I also found out that after adopting Mary Ruth the nurse and her husband were able to conceive and have a child of their own.

I kept that cassette all these years. I played it for my children when they were little. And somehow that cassette had found its way into the glove compartment of the Highlander. We had cleaned nearly everything else out of the car, but as I was preparing to hand the car keys over, I remembered the cassette.

I told the man about my work in the hospital, and about Mary Ruth. I gave him the cassette. I also had him write down his name and that of his wife and sons. He showed me their photos. I told him I would keep them in my prayers.

These men were Muslim. In fact, they were observant Muslims – they would not even drink the free coffee at the bank because it is the season of Ramadan. Yet they received my offer of prayers with thanks, though they knew I was Christian. And we talked of blessings – of how God sees to the little things and the big things: the sale of a car and the life of a family, an old cassette and a chance meeting of people.

I don’t know what this little story means. I am very, very grateful, though, to have lived it.

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Something else I don’t know is the meaning of this – and yet I know it is true, and I know that it is connected with today’s story:

Blessings are as delicate as birds.
You cannot close your hand around them. You must hold them very gently. If you try to keep them, you will injure them. You may even kill them, and then they are no use to you or anyone else.
Abraham, the mutual father of Jews, Christians, and Muslims, was ‘blessed to be a blessing' (Gen 12: 1-3). We are all the products of his blessedness, and we, like him, are blessed to be blessings.
We cannot grasp and grab our blessedness. We must hold onto the blessings of our God lightly and let them flow through our fingers, falling upon whoever comes into our lives. If a child of another faith comes our way, we pass on our blessings to them – for they are not OUR blessings, but the blessings of our God, and their entire purpose is to be passed from blessed hand to blessed hand.