Nurse the Hate: The Miracle In Nashville

Here’s the way I heard the story.  It came right from the horse’s mouth.  Bobby Lanphier was driving his truck filled with food for the unfortunate people that need food in the greater Nashville area.  He’s just a guy driving a truck, doing his best to stay on schedule and get the food to places like churches and shelters.  He’s not looking for any trouble.  He’s a little early for a drop-off at one of his stops on the route.  Let’s say they were planning to see Bob at 11am.  Bob shows up at 1045a and the place is empty.  He’s going to have to wait.

Bob drives his truck around the back of a nearby Wal-Mart.  WalMarts have enormous back loading docks, because when you are busy crushing small businesses of all types, you need lots of space to bring truckloads of patriotic sweatshirts, off brand jeans, Chinese made frying pans and enormous flat screen TVs.  Bob swung his truck around that lot to kill 15 minutes.  He parks the truck, rolls down the window, and relaxes.  A few minutes later, directly across the street, Bob spots a guy making a beeline towards his truck.  The guy had that wiry and leathery look of a man that has made his living in the trades outside in the elements.  Sun brown skin.  Utility shorts with work boots.  Ballcap.  Bob immediately thinks, “That guy can’t be coming over here, right?”  He adjusts his mirror to look for the guy that has now disappeared.

Bap!  Bap!  Bap!  There is a rapping on the truck window.  It’s the guy.  The guy barks out at Bob.  “Hey!  What are you doing?”  Bob is obviously taken aback at this needlessly confrontational situation.  More out of shock at being asked the question than anything else Bob answers.  “I’m waiting to make a delivery at that shelter.”  The man is incensed.  He has taken some sort of personal affront to the idea that Bob is loafing while on the clock.  “Who is your supervisor?”  What?  “Who is your SUPERVISOR???”  The guy is really fired up.  Though even now he can’t really answer why he continues to respond to this guy, Bob dutifully hands him a business card and telling him how he needs to wait until the people arrive so he can make the delivery.

The man takes the card and looks at Bob skeptically.  He flips it back and forth between his thumb making a “tick tick tick” noise as he considers the situation.  His face lessens in severity.  He shouts up at Bob in the driver’s seat.  “Ok!  OK!  Look…  You’ve got a big dick and so do I!  Now get back to work!”  With that he turned and walked back across the street leaving a stunned Bob to try to figure out what exactly happened.  The theory began to hatch that he might have been a foreman on a rehab project at a bar across the street and decided to place himself in a position of Foreman For The City.  This led to Bob driving by jobsite afterwards slowly and scanning the area for the man.  No dice.  He has not been spotted again.

This has led to my personal theory that this man might have been Jesus Christ.  Certainly, the idea that Jesus walks beside us is a consistent one in theology.  If he did appear, I think we can agree it would be in the form of a working man.  As Jesus himself was a humble carpenter, he would be modernized to now look much like this man appeared to be that day.  I think we can also agree that Jesus sometimes requires that we make a personal inventory of our behavior, much as this laborer did of Bob.  Now there can be some debate if Jesus would say “You’ve got a big dick and so do I.”.  That’s definitely a discussion point.  It doesn't seem super Jesus-like.  I will give you that.  But it is undeniable that this man was providing Bob guidance.   How you look at this incident depends on your perception.  Me?  I choose to believe it was a vision along the lines of the Miracle at Fatima.  I also know that I plan on using “you’ve got a big dick and so do I!  Now get back to work!” as often as I can.  It's the word of God.