Random Acts of Kindness and the Blessings That Follow

I’ve been thinking a lot about random acts of kindness. We see them everywhere. We really do. But they don’t quite get the attention that they deserve, do they? We hear more about the bad events on the news, and not the good ones.

A while back I saw Kurt Warner on some show, and you know, I just love him. He has an interesting story and of course he was one of my favorite football players evah. He was talking about how unfair it seemed that when someone hits it big (like a celebrity or an athlete) they seem to get more and more blessings, and people constantly want to give or buy them stuff. When he and his family are out at a restaurant eating dinner, for example, a lot of times the manager of the restaurant will want to buy their dinner. Just because they’re famous. And that’s not really fair, is it?

So he and his family look around the restaurant and decide who they should buy dinner for. They randomly choose a family and buy their dinner to do something nice.

I liked this idea. Problem is, money isn’t huge for us. It’s always been a struggle, probably always will be, and as a result we rarely go out to dinner ourselves. I feel that the more we hear about random acts of kindness like this and do them, the better our relationships will be.

I do pretty many acts of kindness for friends and family. I send cards, call, try to lift spirits, try to do nice things. I do this for strangers, too, and it’s the typical stuff we all probably do: hold open doors, let people go ahead of you, pay a few cents for someone when they’re short, smile, listen, and just generally try and be nice.

But I’ve been on a mission to do more. Not just volunteering or giving to church or charity (which is also great) but random acts. Things you do for no other reason than just because. I read about a girl who was doing random acts of kindness to honor her late grandmother. Isn’t that wonderful? I loved that idea. One of the things she did was buy lunch for the person behind her in line at the drive-thru.

I’ve heard of people doing this before. And like I said, money isn’t something that’s in great supply generally so we don’t eat out at fast food places a lot. But the other day I had to run errands, and I was starving and went through the drive-thru to get something. I glanced in my rearview mirror, and here was this younger woman, and “Redeemed” was on the radio (one of the favorite songs I love to meditate on) and I thought, why not? So I asked the checkout girl if I could just pay for the person behind me.

She was flustered. She stammered. “I dunno. I guess.” Clearly I had wrecked her routine. I said, “I just want to do something nice for someone today.” She stopped and looked at me, and a huge smile came across her face. She was thrilled. She was so flustered she forgot to give me my own bag of food. LOL She told me she was going to tell the girl behind me about this blessing, and I heard that word. Blessing. That word that connects us through God’s love. If we love God, we know about blessings. I said, “God bless you,” and she said the same and she was so happy.

And that was the part that blew me away. How a random act of kindness could bring about God’s name. What a blessing that was for me. It was completely unexpected. I thought the woman would just take my money and I’d go about my way. But we were able to stop for a moment and praise Him. Offer his blessings to someone else. What a gift.