There are events in a man’s life when one glimpses his true character as the long-hidden sun shining briefly from behind a cloud. Those glimpses often coincide with a crisis when the stuff of everyday life is stripped away.

George was an old man when I first met him. He welcomed me into his apartment wearing a tattered sweater. George was worn down with years, a shrunken image of what he had been in his prime. But there was a hint of something bigger, younger, and stronger about him.

His wife of 50-some years suffered from a physically and mentally debilitating disease. When I met her, she could no longer walk. George gladly pushed her wheelchair and took her where she wanted to go. As the disease progressed, George became her full-time caretaker. His heart never wavered.

I visited George in his wife’s last days. He was profoundly sad. When I commented on the kindness with which he cared for her he fixed my gaze. He was silent for a time, perhaps remembering old vows. Then his lips turned up in a slight but confident smile. And he said, “That is what I signed up to do.”

George was only following his Master who “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (Joh 13:1 NAS)

George was a good man. A real man.

Image from the Alban Psalter