Polio Praises

I was sitting on a rough-sawn bench in a hand-made cement block church building in Tema, Ghana West Africa. There were, perhaps, 300 people there with me. We were singing a song of praise. I was seated close to the front, on the end of a bench, by an opening where a window would eventually be. It was HOT. I needed the breeze. I was gazing out the window and saw someone coming down the dirt road leading up to the building. It was a thirtyish man. He was in a wheel chair. The chair was propelled by a bicycle-type crank (like a pedal) moved by hand and arm power. He was a polio victim.

When the man got to the stairs that led into the building, he dragged himself off the seat, sat on the bottom step and began raising himself backward one step at a time. When he reached the top step and turned to a crawling position, I noticed that he had a pair of flip flops (rubber sandals) on his hands. I also noticed that his legs were without muscle, mere bones covered with skin. His knees were thickly calloused.

The door he came in was at the front of the building between the pews and the platform where the song-leader and, later, the preacher stood. Everyone in the building watched the cripple. No one rose to assist him. He crawled across the front until he got to the center aisle. No seats up front. He turned and crawled to the back row where there were a couple of open spots on one of the benches. Without aid he struggled to raise himself to a sitting position on the bench; he turned his sweat-wet face toward the songleader, raised his head back . . . and sang praises to God!