Daisy

#707
Daisy
I have been blessed in more ways than I could count. In my professional life, although short, I had the best patients anyone could imagine, I loved them and they loved me. This is what makes wonderful doctor-patient relationships.

I was the first health-care practitioner in the city without a “Jim Crow” reception area. Every other doctor had one room marked “White” and another marked “Colored”. All of my patients received the same care: the best I was able to give. The money they paid me for my care was all the same color.

One of my favorite black patients was Miss Daisy Thompson. Daisy had a hard life, but was always a testimony to God's blessings. She drove her own car, lived her own home, and had a good job as caretaker for several people in the community. In her home, she cared for two adopted, young relatives. Often, she would bring her friends from her church to me as patients. Back then, the state only paid me two dollars to take care of a welfare patient. I will always remember what she said the first time she was in my office, she said, “doctor, I must take care of my eyes and my feets, both have got to take care of me a long time, my eyes and my feets.”

The Pharisee Simon, a prominent Jewish leader invited Jesus to eat at his house. One must understand the customs of that day to understand what happened. The homes usually had a courtyard where formal meals were served. In the case of a notable personality, often people from the street would sit around the walls and listen to the conversation from the table. The meals were served from the table, and those at the table were in a reclining position, a more-or-less “fainting couch” type chair. Christ was in this position when a woman from the street came in and washed his feet with her tears and dried his feet with her hair.

One can well imagine the consternation of this Pharisee and his guest. That this man, Jesus, gaining some reputation in the community would have a prostitute come in and give him this attention. Christ let it be known, simply and succinctly, his relationship with her, her with him and him and the others.

Is it not truly remarkable that in this dry, dusty countryside the feet were so important. The shoes of that day were crude handmade sandals at best. The feet would get very dirty because everyone walked, it was a show of hospitality that the first thing a servant or slave would do when a guest entered the house, was wash their feet.

The very first mental image I have in my mind, I must have been one or two years of age, is that of my mother, on her knees, washing the feet of another woman in church. I don't know who the woman was, but I remember being intrigued by stockings and garters. I did not understand the servitude communion practice of this, my family's country church. The faith and practices of this denomination, one of the country's earliest denominations, in the celebration of our Lord's supper, after receiving the bread and wine at the Lord's table, demonstrating what God instituted at the first celebration of his death: the washing of saint's feet, girted with a towel and then drying the feet.

I will remember the first time I participated in this recurrent ordinance of the New Testament church. I had been newly baptized, I remember my father bringing in buckets of water from the outdoor well in the churchyard, putting water in basins. One of the older men of the church took me aside and showed me the ceremony. From that day to this, it is the one ceremony of the church which has more meaning than any other, because not only is it illustrating what our Blessed Lord demonstrated on the night before His crucifixion, but it shows the servant attitude, something long lost in most 20th century “masquerade party” church activities.

One of my cousins called me, “Tom, how old are those foot-washing basins in the church?” I said, “I don't know, but from all I do know, they are probably the original basins, built with the church in 1874.” The faith and practices of this denomination were brought over from Europe, I can trace my family back to Morristown, New Jersey. When they came to North Carolina, they may have brought the basins with them. The family organized several churches in eastern North Carolina: Little Rock, Rains Crossroads, etc. Their faith, practices, their bodies, their property, all committed to the cause of Christ.

I have been blessed to walk on the streets of Bethlehem, Nazareth, Jerusalem, Capernaum, Damascus, Ephesus, and many other biblical scenes. I have tried to keep my feet, my walking, in places of correctness. I wish I had the moral structure, the faithfulness of my ancestors and others who have walked in the straight and narrow way...we walk in His steps because this is the way home.