The Way It Is

A Small Serving

It continues to amaze me how the small acts we do tend to have a much larger impact than we expect. We often think that in order to make a large impact on the world, we must do some great thing. Here's the thing. God is in the small details of our lives. He's there every minute, every hour. His Spirit prompts us to do small acts of service probably all day long. How often do we follow through? A friend of mine has mentioned to me countless times of impressions he/she has received and didn't follow through because it was such a small thing. I'm impressed that this person receives those impressions, because I have a hard time hearing them. The key is the follow through.

I heard it said of Thomas S. Monson that what differentiates him from the average person is that he acts on the things we think about doing. This reminds me of visits we made to a very old, kind man, who would always offer my children ice cream. He would always have such a hard time digging the ice cream out because he had no ice cream scoop - he had a small spoon that would bend under the pressure of excavating the ice cream and loading it onto the cones. I thought to myself, "I'm going to buy this man the best ice cream scoop I can find". Amazingly, instead of just thinking about it for months, I did it. I bought the ice cream scoop. Actually, it was one of these bad boys below. It was an ice cream spade. The next time we visited we gave him the spade and he was thankful and commented on how much he liked it. It was so much easier to scoop the ice cream out.



The thing that was so touching was this: every single time we went to visit this man after that, and I mean EVERY SINGLE TIME for at least a year, he mentioned that we gave him that ice cream scoop and he loved it. You and I might think, it's a silly ice cream spade that cost eight dollars. For this man however it represented something so much more. It meant that someone was thinking of him. It meant that people were concerned for him. It meant that he was not completely alone.

So the next time you have a thought that you should buy something at the store for someone, or ask to watch their kids, or mow someone's lawn, or EVEN to buy someone an ice cream spade, don't delay. The ice cream is melting!

Labels: caring, helping, service, sharing, small things

posted by Ben Arkell @ 9:54 PM