“Stinky”
“Then an expert in the law stood up to test him (Jesus), saying, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’”
Seeing Others the Way Jesus Does
Have you ever wondered how someone gets a name like Stinky? What starts as a simple question turns into a meaningful journey of survival and the grace of friendship. As Blizzard listens, he begins to see beyond appearances and understand the deeper struggles many people face. This touching story helps children see others through a lens of empathy while pointing them back to the truth found in The Parable of the Good Samaritan.
Dear Friends,
My story is a little long today. I hope you have time to sit and read it prayerfully.
We were just about finished with our morning Bible study when there was a knock on our door. The doorbell rang at the same time. Grandpa slowly got up to see who was at the door. I was thinking, “How rude. Who would knock and ring our doorbell all at the same time?”
When Grandpa opened the door, there was cousin Bubba. His pillow pal, Stinky, slipped inside the door right behind him but stayed nearly out of sight. I was looking their way and caught Stinky looking out at me with a big grin. We had not seen each other for months. It was great!
I jumped out of my chair and scrambled over to hug him. I asked Grandma if Cyclone and I could go outside and play with Stinky. She said, “Change into your play clothes and leave your shoes in the garage when you come back in.” I told her I wanted to show Stinky the new trail that had been built through the woods between the sledding hill and the nearby forest. She said we could go, but to stay together and to be back within an hour. So off we went like three little rabbits, running and hopping.
The new trail was fun to hike. We saw two squirrels and some birds along the way. We also saw other people hiking and jogging. We hadn’t gone very far when I turned and asked Stinky, “How did you ever get the name, Stinky? You never smell bad.”
“How did you ever get the name, Stinky?
You never smell bad.”
Stinky replied, “It’s a long story, Blizzard. If you really want to know, you will need to be patient.
“You see, I used to call a large cardboard box my home. There I lived with a homeless lady named Gladys and her twelve-year-old daughter, Melissa. One day, Gladys’s husband left her, and when she could not pay her rent, she lost her home. Without a home, all she had left was her daughter, a few critical possessions, and me. With no car or a way to care for us, she could not get a job. We were very poor and hardly ever had enough to eat. Getting clean, especially in the winter, was always very difficult.
“Gladys gave her daughter and me one dollar each. Every day, I would head out on my own as we tried to find food. One morning for breakfast, I went into a restaurant and ordered a plate of pancakes and bacon. I also ordered a glass of milk. I knew I could not pay for the meal, and ordering the breakfast was wrong, but I was so very hungry. I had gone to bed the night before hungry, but this was normal for all three of us.
“When it was time to pay and leave, I started to cry and told the waitress that I had lost my money except for the dollar I still had and was willing to pay with. I also offered to work all day at the restaurant.
“It broke my heart when the cashier said she appreciated my honesty and said, ‘Feel free to come back again when you are hungry.’ I thought for a moment about what she said. I told her that I’d love to come back again and thanked her for being so kind and understanding.
“Living on the street is not easy, and people have to learn how to be very resourceful. When it was getting cool in the fall, I swatted some flies and put them in a little bottle I had picked out of the trash. Later, when I was feeling starved, I went into a restaurant and ordered a dinner with meat, potatoes, and some gravy. When I was finished eating almost everything, and no one was looking, I slipped the bottle of dead flies out of my pocket and placed one of them into the gravy, then placed a little gravy on it. When the waitress came by, I pretended to feel ill and showed her the dead fly.
“She looked at the plate with disgust, picked it up, and apologized. She offered me another meal. I told her, ‘No, thank you. I need to go home.’ She smiled at me as I started to leave. ‘When you are hungry, come back again, and I will see to it that you get a good meal. Please don’t bring in your flies,’ she said and winked at me. ‘Thank you so much,’ I replied. I wondered why she was wise to my stunt.
“Blizzard, I am ashamed of what I did, but I did not know what else to do. I was so hungry.
“Often when I was hungry, I liked to go to a store where employees offered customers free samples to eat. While I was there, I would sample some other things that were easy to pick up. I never spent my dollar, so when someone from the store would tell me to move on, I would show them my dollar and say I was trying to decide if I wanted to buy whatever I was sampling.
“One day, I was getting a snack from a lady giving out samples when the department manager came up and grabbed me. He claimed I was ‘free loading’ food again and that I was not to come back to the store!
“Just as that happened, Bubba came along and asked the man, ‘What are you doing to my pillow?’ Even though I had never seen Bubba before, he reached out, took hold of me, and told the manager to quit harassing ‘my pillow.’ I was shocked!
“The manager said I was pilfering food and being a nuisance. I pulled out my dollar to show him I was prepared to pay for whatever, but by that time, he was getting wise to me.
“That was the time and place where Bubba and I met and became steadfast pals. It was there he first called me ‘Stinky,’ maybe because I did stink. Ever since our first encounter, Bubba has always loved me unconditionally and taken good care of me. So that’s how I got to know you at camp, Blizzard, when I was with Bubba.
“I never went back to live in the box under the bridge, but Bubba and I took food to Melissa and Gladys several times. One day, we went back to see them, but they and their box were gone. I hope something good has happened to them and that they are doing well. They are both very nice. Maybe someone as kind as Bubba has found them.”
As we neared the end of our hike along the trail, I asked Stinky if there had been any good experiences he enjoyed during his homeless life. He said that one time, in a dumpster, he had found two unopened boxes with twelve baked donuts inside each box. What a treat that was! On a different occasion, he found a big bunch of slightly overripe bananas that had been thrown away. “Yum!”
After telling me about the donuts and bananas, Stinky paused and recounted how he had met a schoolgirl who would share half of her sandwich with him on her way home from school. That all ended when the school closed for the summer. He missed that.
As we continued our hike, I remembered how shy Stinky was when we had first met. I wondered if his experience on the street had made him that way. I asked if he worried that someday he might become homeless again. “Not too much,” he said. He added, “I love and appreciate Bubba very much and know he will do all he can for me.” Just then, he reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out his dollar. “You never know if something bad can happen to Bubba and me, just like it did to Gladys and her daughter. I am still prepared to survive.”
Once back home, as we entered the garage to take off our boots, I pondered how unfortunate it is that so many people see homeless people as garbage. Maybe Stinky did smell once, back then. A lot of people believe that all homeless people are on drugs or alcohol and are lazy, that losing their home and job is their own fault, but that’s not always so.
Stinky, Gladys, Melissa, and their friends were poor and perhaps stinky. They would visit a charity now and then or check out dumpsters, but they were never involved with drugs or anything that did not fill their stomachs or keep them warm and dry.
Like Stinky, I hope things get better for the homeless. I also hope that those blessed by the Lord don’t automatically blame homeless people for their problems. I hope and believe my friends will show compassion when they see the poor in their town.
Grandpa says it is unfortunate, but you need to be careful when you want to be compassionate. There are people on the streets pretending to need help who only want to get some of your money. These predatory fakes immeasurably hurt the cause of the truly needy people. You can assist the poor by giving to a homeless shelter, soup kitchen, or your church's benevolence fund.
As you know, I like to share a scripture passage with every story I share with my friends, who so graciously read my recollections. Today’s passage is found in Luke 10: 25-37. csb
The Parable of the Good Samaritan
“Then an expert in the law stood up to test him (Jesus), saying, ‘Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?’
‘What is written in the law?’ He asked him. ‘How do you read it?’
He answered, ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’
‘You’ve answered correctly, ‘He told him. ‘Do this, and you will live.’
But wanting to justify himself, he asked Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’
Jesus took up the question and said, ‘A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell into the hands of robbers. They stripped him, beat him up, and fled, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down that road. When he saw him, he passed by on the other side. In the same way, a Levite, when he arrived at the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan on his journey came up to him, and when he saw the man, he had compassion. He went over to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on olive oil and wine. Then he put him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. The next day, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him. When I come back, I’ll reimburse you for whatever extra you spend.’
‘Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?’
‘The one who showed mercy to him,’ he said.
Then Jesus told him, ‘Go and do the same.”
May the Lord bless and keep you.
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