You Took My Breath Away...

"Then the King will say,
I'm telling you the solemn truth:
Whenever you did one of these things
To someone overlooked or ignored,
That was Me - you did it to Me."
Matthew 25:40

Yesterday, you stopped me in my tracks.  I was driving down the street, in a hurry to get where I was going, as always, and there you were.  You didn't know I was watching you.  You were just doing what comes naturally to you.  There you were, stepping out without blinking an eye onto a street filled with speeding drivers who were too self-absorbed to acknowledge the presence of anyone else in the world at that moment.  After all, we had places to go, people to see! An onlooker, watching the scene unfold, might have mistaken the drivers for clones of The White Rabbit, straight out of Alice in Wonderland, murmuring to ourselves, "I'm late, I'm late, for a very important date. No time to say, hello, goodbye, I'm late, I'm late, I'm late!" Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll

You, though, you were something altogether different. You didn't seem to even notice any of us.  You were focused like a laser beam on the object of your attention, the tiny, broken old woman you were running to help.  It was a study in contrasts  You, so young and agile, leaping like a buck across the street to make it to her side in seconds, as if the world depended on it.  She, so frail in frame, she was barely able to lift her head to see you running to her side.  She was inching her way across the street, on legs that were like twigs bent so low they seemed about to break.  The cane she leaned on shook in her trembling hands.  She was scared.  You could see it on her face, wrinkled from brow to chin.  She was the picture of vulnerability.  You, the picture of strength...

I was mesmerized by what I was watching.  You ran to her side, took her arm and wrapped it gently inside the fold of your own, holding her close as if you were protecting something very dear to you. Then you slowed your gait to meet hers.  You didn't rush her.  You didn't condescend to her.  You raised your head and lovingly, gently, respectfully, led her across the busy street.  You stopped the traffic with the witness of your kindness.  You were breathtaking.  Like a child of another time and another place, you gave us all a living lesson in "respect for the elderly," a lost art in our youth crazed, American culture.  You humbled me with the witness of your grace and kindness to this little old woman. 

We were on a college campus that day with students rushing to and from their classes.  You were probably one of them.  But, that day, at that precise moment in time, you became the teacher and we were all the students taking notes from a master.  You were, simply, the best...