Guinness Book and the Book of Life

On Christmas Eve of 1991, Mr. Walter Hudson, age 46, once famed as the heaviest man in the world, passed away of a heart attack. At the time of his death, his weight was recorded as 1,025 pounds. If we take the average human weight as 130 pounds, his body was nearly eight times heavier than that of an ordinary person.

He lived in Hempstead, Long Island, New York, seldom seeing his neighbors, shut away within his house until his death. Four years earlier, he had drawn the attention of the world when his body became stuck in the doorway of his home, and the corner of the wall had to be sawed away for him to pass. Then, his weight was reported at 1,400 pounds.

Through the combined care of doctors and dieticians, he lost several hundred pounds. The day he stepped outside after more than thirty years indoors was a sight to behold. We cannot imagine how painful and suffocating his life had been, confined in his own home. Likely, every movement required his family’s assistance. Every step must have made the floor groan and crack beneath him. His efforts to fit through the doorway, and his family’s patient labor, are almost beyond imagination. Perhaps he chose a life of seclusion, apart from the world.

With our ordinary reasoning, it is difficult to understand him. What meaning did his life carry? Watching the funeral workers, young and sweating, push the specially made casket holding his body onto a trailer, many thoughts crossed my mind.

Have I ever given thanks for having a small body? For being able to sit and rise dozens of times a day, to move up and down freely, without hindrance? Have I ever truly been grateful for such things? If my body had been stuck in a doorway, how furious would I have become? Houses, furniture, even clothing—all designed for “normal” people.

My patience would have collapsed long ago. Without clothes that fit, lying covered only with a sheet, he should have been all the more tenderly cared for, loved faithfully. Surely he was a man whose heart was as large as his body, and whose patience was strong.

“He was truly a gentle man. To be loved by him was to feel endlessly blessed.”

So said Sunday Cruz, his fiancée, with whom he was to be married the next year. Are we sharing such blessing and love with our own families? His kindness, humility, and generosity are remembered by all who knew him.

Some may judge his life as wasted, consumed beneath the burden of his own body. To them, he may seem foolish. Yet I recognize the worth of his life, and I dare not measure the value of any human being lightly. From him, I draw a noble lesson: that God is not only my God, but a God of many faces.

Now, freed from the weight of flesh, I can only rejoice to imagine him ascending heavenward with a body light as a child’s. Surely God welcomed him with open arms.

“My beloved Walter, you have labored long! Humans feel shame only for what can be seen, yet for the heavy burdens hidden inside their hearts, they feel no shame. Look there—do you see them? Bound by the weight of selfishness and sin, unable to step beyond the door! If only they would pass through, they could taste the freedom and abundance of My grace… Yet even when I sent My beloved Son to cut open the door with the saw of love, they resist! How long will they refuse?”

“Oh, Lord… I thought I was the greatest in the world, yet I am nothing at all.”

“Archangel, bring Walter a fine white robe.”

Just as Walter Hudson’s weight will be forever recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records, so too will the hidden weight of our sins be forever recorded in the Book of Life.

January 4, 1992