I was walking up Broadway near Lincoln Center, preoccupied with a personal problem, when the woman came up to me. “Can you give me,” she began, and my weary heart sank at the thought of yet another panhandler, “Directions?” she finished.
Ashamed, I looked her in the eye. She was a wreck. There was goo all over her face, and she wanted to know how to get to the New York Eye and Ear Hospital. She had the right cross street, but was on the wrong side of the island.
“Is it more than five blocks?” she asked, gently.
“Oh yes, much more than that. You have to go all the way across Central Park and then keep going,” I replied.
“There’s a park near here?” she asked, disoriented.
“Do you have bus fare?” I asked.
“No,” she sighed, “But we’ll get there. We’ll get there.”
I looked across the complicated intersection to where the B66 stopped, and momentarily considered walking her there and using my Metrocard to get her on it. But in the time it took me to weigh the possibility she began to shuffle off, and I returned to my route and my worries.
A block later I stopped in my tracks and thought, indignant, “Why didn’t I do that? Why didn’t I extend that 10-minute kindness to help her?”
There was no good answer, no good reason at all. I turned to see if she was still around, but she was gone. And so was my unexpected opportunity to serve Jesus.
