The Story of Vanilla Bean Bob
I was driving to work this morning, worried about a friend who was hospitalized recently for a brain aneurysm, when something happened that reminded me to have faith. A man was walking down the freeway, and something about him reminded me of a housemate I had once in college – Vanilla Bean Bob.
To describe Bob best is to say that he’s fuzzy. Slight of build, about 5’6” with curly, light-brown hair covering his head and most of his face, he was rather quiet, shy, and generally huggable. I shall always remember the way he came down to the kitchen one evening almost in shock. There were three of four of us just standing around walking, but when Bob came in, reverently shriveled in his hands, everything stopped. He grinned then and said in an awed voice, “Hey, want to see a miracle?”
He had been debating for the past several days, he explained, on the relative merits of continuing to call himself “Robert” (people tend to take Roberts seriously, and when you’re fuzzy, that can be a major consideration) or switch to the less formal (and more childlike) “Bob”. He felt that “Bob” was more in line with who he was, but being taken seriously was of great importance to him. He just couldn’t make up his mind. So that morning, he had asked God to give him a sign as to what he should do. Then he held it out to us: the shriveled brown thing he’d been cradling in his hands as he spoke, the vanilla bean he had put in his room the night before as an air freshener. Across the top side, in raised bumps, were the letters, BOB. God had answered.
We all examined this “miracle” closely. We thought at first that it was something Bob had done himself or some kind of strange fungus that had attacked the bean as it lay in the sunshine Bob’s window. But no, the letters were too precise. After 10 or 15 minutes, we were forced to conclude that the bumps really had simply appeared. It truly was a sign from God. It is only now, thinking of my friend and her problem that I remember some of the lessons I learned from Bob. When I think of miracles, or gifts from God, I tend to think of things on a huge scale. You know – saving a life, revelations of major proportions, or some “impossible” physical body healing. I forget that God’s miracles can be small and gentle. Bob was childlike in his faith that God would give him a sign and trusting in his acceptance of that sign when it appeared. It is only now that I understand Bob was really debating whether he wanted to focus his attention on the body and intellect (Robert the Important) or on the spiritual aspects of himself (Bob the Child, trusting and open to wonder). Basically, God told him to “come as a little child,” so he did. From that day on, he had a title; he was Vanilla Bean Bob and we all remember the miracle, though sometimes we simply called him Bob.
With this memory, I’ve been reminded, very gently, that faith and trust can be soft things. I don’t need a big production with flashing lights and a brass band to recognize the miracles God provides. All I have to do is view the world with Child-like wonder and then remember to notice the miracles all around me. God is ever present. My friend will be just fine.
