walter

He met the first and only girl he ever loved when he was 16 at a high school football game. She had brown eyes and black hair. Walter said that Ruth's eyes were the most beautiful ones he had ever seen, and they made her whole face shine. They were so intense that his clear blue eyes shied away in nervousness. Unshaken when he realized Ruth has a boyfriend, he asked Ruth and her boyfriend to go to a drive-in movie in his truck. Walter was smitten and innocently unaware that his persistence way paying off.

Sixty-four years later, Walter carefully shuffles down the one-lane road next to his home to get the mail--it's his exercise. Walter has served over 60 missions for the Southern Baptist Association, and he is preparing a trip for himself to go to Venezuela to visit his friends. He learned to build cabinets, countertops, churches, and houses. The hands of this carpenter built Ruth's house--their house. The couple married young and were always in love. When she died in '89 from breast cancer, the heart in his breast was broken, and their two grown children (with children of their own) wept the loss of their mother's deep brown eyes that were known to fill with compassion, but never with tears.

"I will never be able to love another woman like Ruth," he said. So he selflessly devoted his life to giving love to everyone in the best way he knew how. He gave the ability to walk to a girl with crooked legs. He gave the ability to see to children with crossed eyes. He gave the hope of salvation to those in the cities of the Ukraine, Venezuela, Brazil, Mississippi, and anywhere his feet stepped, his mouth and actions spoke of Jesus. He walked like a modern Paul, determined in the faith to be unshaken from the Faith in Christ.

Some call him an angel. What they may not expect is that in the most complex way, he is more than an angel. He is a carpenter, a father, a healer, a friend of the friendless, a man who walks without guile. No one leaves his presence hungry. He turns blindness to sight; he turns empty lots to places of worship; he waves his hand and drops candy and Little Debbie cakes from his sleeves. He turns his possessions into birds that fly to those who need winged hope. His name is Walter, and he shuffles to his mailbox and looks through pictures of his grandchildren. Yesterday he mowed his daughter's lawn and said, "This may be the last time I do this," and today he rested like it was the Sabbath, because it happens to be the day when 80 years ago, he was granted breath and began his mission to bless the entire human race.