10/17/2023
Acts of Kindness and Encouragement
Can Be Momentous
One of the themes of Sunday’s sermon flows right out of a quote by Mother Theresa: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.”
National Public Radio has a feature on its broadcasts called “Unsung Hero.” A listener relates an experience in which someone stepped in and made a difference in their life. They are wonderful examples of “small things done with great love.” The example I had put aside for Sunday’s benediction got preempted by the $1,000 Breakfast Club. I thought you enjoy the impact of this remembrance as much as I did.
NPR, Unsung Hero Segment
Betsy Cox met her unsung hero in 2014, just a few weeks after her son Blake was born. The family didn't have a lot of money at the time, and they lived in a townhouse that could get chilly. So one cool morning, Betsy strapped Blake into his car seat and drove over to a local big box store to pick up a space heater.
BETSY COX: “It was one of those first cold mornings where everything felt like a struggle, and I came in just kind of downtrodden, flustered. I was a new mom at the time and so, you know, just maybe kind of irritable. And of course, I went back to the heater section, and they were all sold out of heaters.
“So I made my way over to one of the cleaning aisles with the sponges and stuff. And all of a sudden, this man just came booming towards me. So he was a Southern man just had a kind of a larger-than-life dynamic to him. And he said, ‘Rhonda’ - calling out to his wife – ‘you've got to come see the baby.’
“‘Can we come see the - can we come look at the baby?’ And he said, he has the most big, beautiful, blue eyeballs. And I just never really heard someone say that, and it just made me chuckle and kind of immediately shifted my mood, you know?
“So then we chatted a little bit, and he said at the end, God was good to you, darlin'. God was real good to you. And he said it with such passion, it just about knocked me over. I can't hardly explain it. It was just this amazing moment of human connection. It was so simple.
“Then as I came out and it was a bright, sunny day and, like - I don't know - I just, like, looked up to the sky, like, who is this man? And like, he just - he made me feel so good. And you remember how people make you feel. I know he was put right there for me that day, as crazy as that might seem or sound. But I just - I can feel it. In the blink of an eye like that, he really just changed my whole outlook of that day. He impacted my life. And so I just - I want to say thank you to him. He's truly been an unsung hero to me.”
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