A Small Corner Of The World

In this world is darkness, so let us shine—You in your small corner and I in mine.

- Diana Duncan-Fletcher

I wasn’t totally surprised the lyrics to my favorite hymn, “Jesus Bids Us Shine,” popped into my head at that particular moment. They often ran through my mind. No, what surprised me was that I wasn’t just thinking the words. I was singing them out loud. Even stranger, I was singing them out loud on the phone to a man I’d never actually met.

It was the spring of 1989. I was working for the vice president of an engineering company in Scarborough, Ontario. Part of my job was communicating with our suppliers, and I got to know some of them quite well through our phone conversations. My favorite calls came from a guy named Thurman.

He phoned once a week from Houston. I always knew it was him because of his Texas twang. We joked about the differences in weather between Texas and Ontario. He asked me about my job, and I asked him about his elderly mother. We were more than 1,500 miles apart, but I felt close to him somehow. Our conversations left me feeling upbeat and recharged.

When he called on that warm spring morning, I could tell business wasn’t the first thing on his mind.

“How’s your mother doing?” I asked, following a hunch.