I walked up the driveway and stepped on the mat, which was rimmed with crumbled leaves and grass. I rang the doorbell. Even that felt strange. I suppose I didn’t think a holy man had a doorbell. Looking back, I don’t know what I expected. It was a house. Where else would he live? A cave?
But if I didn’t expect a doorbell, I surely wasn’t ready for the man who answered it. He wore sandals with socks, long Bermuda shorts, and an untucked, short-sleeved, button-down shirt. I had never seen the Reb in anything but a suit or a long robe. That’s what we called him as teenagers. “The Reb.” Kind of like a superhero. The Rock. The Hulk. The Reb. As I mentioned, back then he was an imposing force, tall, serious, broad cheeks, thick eyebrows, a full head of dark hair.
“Hellooo, young man,” he said cheerily.
Uh, hi, I said, trying not to stare.
He seemed more slender and fragile up close. His upper arms, exposed to me for the first time, were thin and fleshy and dotted with age marks. His thick glasses sat on his nose, and he blinked several times, as if focusing, like an old scholar interrupted while getting dressed.
“Ennnnter,” he sang. “Enn-trez!”
His hair, parted on the side, was between gray and snowy white, and his salt-and-pepper Vandyke beard was closely trimmed, although I noticed a few spots he had missed shaving. He shuffled down the hall, me in tow behind, looking at his bony legs and taking small steps so as not to bump up on him.
How can I describe how I felt that day? I have since discovered, in the book of Isaiah, a passage in which God states:
“My thoughts are not your thoughts
Neither are your ways my ways
For as the heavens are higher than the earth
So are my ways higher than your ways
And my thoughts higher than your thoughts.”
That was how I expected to feel—lower, unworthy. This was one of God’s messengers. I should be looking up, right?
Instead, I baby-stepped behind an old man in socks and sandals. And all I could think of was how goofy he looked.