A Man Walks Into A Bar...

(Note: This is an original story appearing on Now Public first. WDB)

A man walks into a barbershop. He is old. He asks for the owner.

The assistant to the owner is a young woman. She tells him the owner is out for a while, and could she help him.

He says, "Well, since I'm here, can you give me a haircut?"

She says, "Sure," and he sits down.

She starts cutting his hair, thinking to herself that the old man is probably about the age her grandfather would have been if he had lived.

But he hadn't lived. He had died when she was an infant. And all she knew about him really, was only a very few things:

He had died in a car waiting for a traffic light to change, of a massive heart attack, his wife by his side. Only forty-one years old.

And his best friend had a very unusual name which she had never forgotten all these years. And she was thinking of that name while she cut the old man's hair.

It was "Damnscholer."

The assistant remembered that she had always wished she had known more about her grandfather. 

But it was too late for that. He had been dead for years and years. And now so had his wife, as well.

She had to go on living, doing her job, cutting hair, and not knowing a lot of things she wished she did know.

That's life. And somethings just can't be changed.

Or can they?

Just to be nice while she cut the old man's hair, she asked him what his name was.

He said the name.

She stopped cutting. She froze. Somehow she pulled herself together enough to ask him the question.

She said, "You don't by any chance know a Walter Damnscholer, do you?"

He looked up at her and said, "That's me."

When she told him who her grandfather was, he was as surprised as she was.

And for a long time he told her all about her grandfather from their times together as young boys, until his sudden death. What he was like, what he liked to do, and how much he loved his family.

Then he left.

Ten days later, the young woman heard the old man had died.

He had lived ten days long enough, to make a young woman's lifelong dream come true: to know more about her grandfather.

It's never to late

for a miracle.

Even if it's just a minor one.

For that's what some miracles are:

Your heart's desire come true:

Love reaching out -

defying all we know about time and space and limitations -

to bring love and comfort to people.

Coincidence can't do that.

Coincidences are nothing

compared to the power of God

to work things out in your life.

If you don't believe this story is true...

You're welcome to go to Creative Cuts

at 630 Chastain Blvd,

in West Glencoe, Alabama.

Ask Kim there, to tell you all about it

and as you sit in the chair

and get a haircut

Chills will run up your spine as they

did mine,

As she tells the story so much better than I have done...

Because she lived it.

There is so much more to life than

black and white and one and one always equals two. 

There is plenty of gray

And the miracle we forget every day:

That one man and one woman create a third being,

a beautiful loving child.

Algebra is nothing

compared to what God can do.

Jesus healed the sick and raised the dead.

He can surely bring peace and tranquility

and minor miracles

into our lives,

If we would only put it all -

everything -

In his hands.

And live the lives he would have us live.

Try it.

Let God lead you

Even if he tells you

to walk into a bar.

Or a barbershop.

WillBevis.com

January 13, 2010