The Surface and the Depth

Morgan and his wife, Agnes, owned a little nursery about a block north of our church. I don’t think he had regular business hours. Instead, his homemade sign announced when the nursery was open. Morgan’s nursery was our neighborhood’s hidden treasure. The entrance was a rickety wooden gate that led into a small world of fuchsias, daylilies, rhododendrons, azaleas, and more. His nursery had a “secret garden” quality.

Every December the nursery became a Christmas tree lot. But it wasn’t just a tree lot. Morgan’s grandfatherly presence and the proximity of Morgan and Agnes’s warm, little house made it nostalgic and faintly magical. Morgan did not wear a Christmas outfit. He just wore his usual “Morgan stuff,” a scruffy old jacket, well-worn overalls, and a Caterpillar baseball cap. He was, as our daughter put it, “the cutest little old man ever.”

I first met Morgan when he would pass by the parsonage on his daily walks. Later, as I became more interested in gardening, we began to talk about important things like planting and pruning, compost and soil. In time he began to talk to me about his battle with leukemia. When I stopped by the nursery, he would tell me of his latest blood count. Sometimes, amid the plants, I would put my arm around him and we would pray together. 

He worried about his health because he was concerned about how Agnes would fare when he was no longer around. But that’s not the way it happened. Agnes had a fall, and then she had several strokes.
Soon, she passed away.

Morgan was devastated. I don’t think he lost his will to live, but he seemed to have lost his purpose for living. It was, therefore, not surprising when, soon after Agnes died, the leukemia erupted and his blood counts grew dangerously abnormal. It was as if his body no longer had reason to be vigilant and the disease attacked with a kind of pent-up fury.

On his way to the hospital for the last time, Morgan came to see me. In a weak voice, he said to me, “Pastor, last week I was having a down day, a really terrible day. Then, all of sudden, you walked in to see me. Pastor, you were an answer to prayer. God knew I needed you that day. God sent you to me that day.”

I don’t remember what I said in response, but I do remember what I was thinking: Morgan, you don’t understand. That day I’d been at a meeting on the east side, at the conference office. Stopping by to see you was just a matter of convenience, time, distance, and mileage.

What I was thinking was true; my thoughts described a reality. But what Morgan described was more true, more real. I was about schedule, mileage, convenience; Morgan was about God’s grace and God’s provision.

I saw the surface; Morgan saw the depth.

The sweet nurseryman with a shaky voice had softly, unknowingly but
thoroughly rebuked, schooled, and blessed his pastor.

In the last few days of his life here on earth I visited Morgan in the hospital. The leukemia was raging throughout his body, and he had developed pneumonia. The doctors had informed the family that he had little time. He knew he was dying. As I sat by his bedside, I read to him Romans 8:38 and reminded him that Jesus loved him and nothing could separate him from the love of God. I was seeking to help him see that there was more going on than leukemia or pneumonia. I wanted to help him hold onto a reality that was deeper than his weakness and truer than his suffering. I wanted to help him see things as God saw them.

It was my privilege and obligation to do this for him. After all, he had done it for me.