The Zinc Gurney

Once again I found myself at the helm of a good book that I did not finish. Because of content and apprehension, I decided to abandon ship. The book is titled The Monster of Florence; a true story of a mystery that, to this day, remains unsolved. This book is a wonderful read if you have a strong stomach. But I am not doing a book review. No. Actually, a short paragraph in this book speaks volumes to how we should be viewing others around us. As a Christian, it challenged me to see people in a little different light.

Let me set the scene for better understanding. The setting is in the Medical Examiner’s (M.E’s) morgue after a brutal murder in the olive groves of Florence, Italy. The authors of the book, Douglas Preston and Mario Spezi (who is the Florentine reporter assisting the lead author) are talking with the M.E. while he is working on a dead body:

“This one? A brilliant scholar, a distinguished professor in the Accademia della Crusca no less. But, as you can see, tonight yet another disappointment has laid me low; I have just opened the head and what do I find inside? Where is all this wisdom? Boh! Inside it looks just like the Albanian hooker I opened yesterday. Maybe the professor thinks he’s better than her! But when I open them up, I find that they’re equal! And they both have achieved the same destiny: my zinc gurney. Why, then, did he tire himself out pouring over so many books? Boh!”

What is the difference between the scholar and the hooker beside social class? Nothing! They have the same mind with the same potential. They chose different paths to take and therefore the world esteems one and defiles the other, yet they are so vastly the same and ended up in the same physical place: the zinc gurney.

So many times we look at others in disdain and pure disgust. But what’s the difference? Skin color, gender. How about we start looking at the heart? What’s on the inside? Dig into the minds of others and take and interest. Find out what they’re all about. Love others without agenda. That’s so hard for us to do as humans. I’ll admit that I don’t always succeed. In fact I pass up a lot of opportunities to walk in Christ’s love.

It’s funny how God will remind you of things through the most unexpected entities, even if it’s the metaphor of the zinc gurney.