Kindness to Strangers

As I am busying myself with the tasks and events of the Christmas season I recently remembered a Christmas when the normal busy-ness and cheer was very far from my experience and my mind.  It was Christmas Eve morning several years ago and I found myself at Starbucks.  I wasn’t meeting anyone there nor do I remember it being a pit stop on my way to something else.  I think I was just trying to momentarily escape the circumstances I was in and mornings at Starbucks just has an energy about it, so I can only imagine that was the draw.  Anyways….I stepped up to the counter after being in the short line having observed the normal transactions of the individuals in front of me and I ordered my ‘usual’.  The man behind the counter, instead of asking me for $3.74 (or whatever it is) obviously saw something on my face that must have looked pathetic.  He paused…gave me a sweet smile… and said”I got this one…Merry Christmas”.  I just wanted to fall apart right there.  He didn’t know me or what was going on in my life, but his small gesture of kindness was in such a sharp contrast to what I had been experiencing that it made a profound impression.

There are a lot of people experiencing miserable circumstances right now and unfortunately Christmas only amplifies this fact.  The world would probably say some people are undeserving of kindness, but in truth we are all undeserving of anything good.  Regardless of circumstances or whether someone deserves it, as a child of God I am called to love as God loves…without condition, with pure motives and freely given.  I don’t know if Dave is in God’s Family, but he was used as a vessel of love that day.

Thank you Father for showing your love for me through Dave and help me to recognize opportunities to do the same for others.  Amen.