Face

With the first snow fall of the season, there is a face that I can't seem to forget in light of the cold. Aged, dark skin wrinkled with lines, whips of sparse white hair, sometimes hidden under a baseball cap. Moon-shaped asian eyes. A face that occasionally pops out of the dumpster in tattered, worn out jog suits following a series of cans flying out of the dumpster. I've seen him walking down the street, holding on to garbage bags jangling with collected cans, probably to redeem for cash.

All I can tell is that he is about 60 or 70 years old and that he does not speak English. The two times that I tried to speak to him, he just nodded his head and smiled, revealing his missing teeth. I think I tried Korean too, but he had the same blank look on his face (although it could just be my inability to speak Korean). I'm guessing he is Chinese, but that's just my own assumption. I often wonder if he has family, where he came from, where he stays when it is cold. I'm sure people have probably seen him around, but I wonder if anyone knows him.

This also reminds of a face of a woman that I met in Indonesia in the village of Jogjakarta. Similar to the man, she had white hair with dark wrinkled skin, decayed teeth, bright smile. I don't know her name, I don't know what she was laughing about or saying in Javanese. All I remember is her face. But her face was ingrained on my mind whenever I close my eyes to pray on for Indonesia. I guess God felt her face was important enough to remember. 

It's not that I have a thing for old people, or that my heart somehow gets all gushy for the elderly. I definitely do not, especially after nursing hundreds of the geriatric population. However, for some reason there are faces that get ingrained in my mind and I don't know what else to do but pray for them. But...it is hard to pray for someone who you don't know at all. I will probably have no idea if any of my prayers are answered, if that man will find enough to eat on the days I pray for him, or if he stays warm on the nights I pray for him, or if that woman will ever come to know Christ. I guess that's what prayer is...faith, confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.