Saturday, April 19, 2008

Unconditional Love Series

 

Acts 28:2 “The islanders showed us unusual kindness.”

 

The Worth of a Kind Gesture

The simple act of caring makes a huge difference.   Recently, a man in our church took me out to lunch.  I expected, of course, there to be some problem or some reason he wanted to talk to me.   He simply said, “Chip, I have long appreciated you as a person and I just wanted to buy you lunch and thank you for all you have done for my family and for our community.”   We had a wonderful lunch and it was a lot of fun just to hang out.  I was deeply appreciative of his kindness and grateful that he set aside the time to buy me lunch.   

 

All my life I have heard old preacher’s tales.  There is story after story that preachers have told to illustrate certain points in sermons.  Such a story is the one about Babe Ruth and a child’s kindness towards him.

 

Baseball legend George Herman “Babe Ruth” was playing one of his last major league games.  The Boston Braves were playing the Reds in Cincinnati.  The old veteran wasn’t the player he once had been.  The ball looked awkward in his aging hands.  He wasn’t throwing well.  In one inning, his misplays allowed most of the runs scored by Cincinnati possible.   As Babe walked off the field after making a third out, head bent in embarrassment, a crescendo of “boo’s” followed him to the dugout.  

 

A little boy in the stands couldn’t tolerate it.  He loved Babe Ruth, no matter what.  With tears streaming down his face, the boy jumped over the railing and threw his arms around the knees of his hero.   Babe Ruth picked up the boy, hugged him, set him back on the ground, and gently patted his head. 

 

The rude booing ceased.  A hush fell over the park.  The crowd was touched by the child’s demonstration of love and concern for the feelings of another human being.     

 

When Paul was on the way to Rome he was on a ship driven across the Adriatic Sea by a horrible storm.  They had thrown everything overboard and gone without food for fourteen days.   When the ship finally wrecked on the island of Malta, they floated on pieces of planks in the surf and finally reached safety.   Acts 28:2 said “The islanders showed us unusual kindness.  They built a fire and welcomed us…”   This act of kindness mentioned by Paul is immortalized in the Bible.  I wonder if our acts of kindness we do are just as immortalized in someway we do not yet understand.  

 

I wonder if there is some act of kindness we could do for another human being today. 

 

Prayer:

Dear God, help me to extend an act of kindness today.  Amen.