Random Acts of Kindness
Bless a stranger with a small, yet powerful, random act of kindness. T.F. Hodge
I'm sure we've all heard of the phrase "random act of kindness". I'm sure we've all participated in random acts of kindness. There are countless things we do every day on a whim that reflect the good nature of people. Whether it's holding the door for someone, smiling at a little child, allowing someone to move lanes in front of you - there are many opportunities for these kinds of acts, and I encourage them.
Recently I've been in a spiritual slump. I haven't felt good about my relationship with God, and most of it has been due to the fact that my prayers have barely been reaching the ceiling. This is because I haven't really had anything specific to pray for. Has that ever happened to any of you? When I don't have specific things to pray for, I can't as easily see God's hand in my life, so I decided to change my prayers. I decided to wake every day and ask God to lead me to someone who needed my help. I no longer wanted to serve him and his children randomly, I wanted him to lead me to the people who were asking for his help. What a week it has been!
Let me just say that God is very interested in the lives of all of his children and he wants to bless everyone. However, he needs our help. He needs people who want to be instruments in his hands. He needs people who say to him, "I want you to use me today to bless the world".
I wrote this brief poem that expressed how I was feeling this past week.
I don't want to bless a stranger
I don't want to give alone
I want to give to someone
That God needs me to know
I don't want a random chancing
Not just any passerby
I want to find the seeker
To answer his suffering cry
I bow my head and bend my knee
Each morning when I wake
God lead me to the one in need
Care for this soul I'll take
I want to be thy servant
Not wandering by chance
I want to share thy love today
I want to be thy hands
Thanks to all of you who have a desire to care for others and ease the burdens of those around you. Check out this amazing video. I hope my children grow up with a desire to be like this young woman.
Labels: God, helping, kindness, prayer, service
posted by Ben Arkell @ 10:42 AM
3 Comments:
been feeling the same way lately. And last night I saw this older, lonely gentleman come into the same IHOP I was at with a friend. He struck me as a little sad but also you just KNEW he ordered the exact same thing everytime. I had this prompting to pay for his meal annonymously. And I did. And I felt amazing. I'll never know why I was supposed to do that, but part of me thinks it was to prove to me that he DOES care about me. He IS in my life and they way I blessed that little man, people constantly bless ME every day. I'm sorry you're struggling. I hope it ends soon. Same for me. :)
Thanks Dana, 1) for listening to your heart and paying for that meal. I'm glad you felt amazing, because you should for doing something like that. 2)For the encouragement - though these past few weeks have got me back on track as I'm trying to put myself in a place where God can use me.
Ben, if you get to the point where you would like to guest post on my blog with your poem, and a couple of experiences that came from your new focus, I would be happy to have you.
I will be having surgery sometime in December and would like to have at least 2-3 weeks worth of guest posts that I can mingle with my own, so that if I can't do much writing the first month, I will still have great posts to share with my readers.
This would fit right in with a number of my posts this month that talk about knowing that we are acceptable to God *because* he trusts us to take care of His children, to act in the place of Christ. I can't think of a better thing to do during the holidays, and all year, than to start the day asking for the chance to stand in for Christ, sometime during the day.
Any of your readers who are interested in guest posting, check out my blog (poetrysansonions.com) and leave a comment or email me!
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