This is a story submitted by a good friend of mine whom I have always admired for her courage in speaking her mind. Thank-you Sam for being YOU:-)
It was a beautiful winter morning; you could see spring around the corner. I had started feeling a little sick. I thought to myself, this can’t be your too young. Even though I had taken the precautions I had failed, I was pregnant. Scared and not knowing what to do, I called my mother. Together we decide the best thing is, go to California to be with her till the baby is born. She sent me a Greyhound ticket and off I went.
Dazed and not knowing where life would take me from here I showed my ticket and boarded the bus. Looking out the window, watching the scenery go by like clips from a movie, it was like I was hypnotized. We came to the first stop in Charlotte, North Carolina. One of the last people getting on the bus was this man, and my first thought was he looks like Jesus. He looked and was dressed in what my mind’s eye had always pictured Jesus to look like. He had cloth wrapped around his feet for socks under his sandals and homemade clothes of the same material. Sitting in the seat next to me he looked over at me and said, “Hello my child, how are you today?” I could tell right away he was a very spiritual person.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
“California.” I answered.
“This will be a good trip that’s where I’m headed too. Most of the time I ride my bicycle but I have been blessed with enough extra money to get a ticket this time, so I will do my work this way,” he tells me.
He started talking about how he travels the county visiting his brothers and sisters. I didn’t understand then that he meant people that believed in the lord as he did. Never once did he push his beliefs on me or even talk about them really, he just had this air about him and you just knew he loved the Lord. The fact that I had started calling him Jesus to myself might have helped too.
Somewhere around Nashville these two little old women got on the bus. They set right up front with Jesus and me. From the minute they got on the bus they were fun, the ladies Jesus and I talked about any and everything. Somehow we got on the subject of home cooked food. We talked about all the things from out childhoods, there’s being much longer ago than mine, to things we still love to eat today. The conversation had taken us all the way to Oklahoma, by now we were all getting hungry talking about all that food. One of the ladies said, “Boy it will be a long time before we can get good food like that.” Jesus told her, “We never know what the lord has in store for us.” It was about an hour later we pulled into the parking lot of a weather beaten cinderblock building. Busses will stop almost anywhere to pick people up. We were told that we would be at this stop for about forty-five minutes so we could all get off and stretch our legs.
The ladies left the bus first with me right on their heels; Jesus was coming out behind us. As soon as we stepped on the ground all three of our noses went straight into the air. The smells of all the home cooked food we had talked about wrapped around us like a warm blanket. Jesus was stepping off the last step as the wonderful aromas found him. His arms went into the air as his head tilted to the sky, “Thank you!” he said. Then he looked at the ladies and myself and said, “See my children ask and you shall receive.” We all walked into the building and before us were all of the foods we had talked about for the past few hundred miles. I couldn’t believe it! I looked at Jesus with a look of wonder and he just nodded and told me to enjoy the harvest of plenty God had put here for us.
I did a lot of thinking the rest of that bus trip and had many more conversations with my wonderful companions. The man I called Jesus living up to my thoughts of him as the miles rolled by.
We arrived in Baskerville, California to have our last breakfast together before we all went our separate ways. Like the many stops before we walked into the bus stop to the smell of wonderful food. We had our last meal together and said our goodbyes. The ladies went there way to catch the next bus and Jesus and I went back to ours. He was getting his bicycle from the luggage compartment as I was waiting to board. We said our goodbyes at last and as I was boarding the bus he tells me, “take care of that son you have with you.” My thoughts went crazy, as I claimed my seat for the last leg of my bus ride. I had never spoken of being pregnant and I wasn’t showing so how did this man know?
Still to this day as I travel the roads in this country I look for the man I called Jesus knowing I will see him somewhere one day showing his kindness that he had shown to me so many years ago.
