Random Acts
On Friday I flew to Kansas City for the scheduled seminar. Â How wonderful it was to see everyone, many who have been readers for years but whom I have never met in person. Â And what a thrill to find that one couple drove all the way from Idaho and another from Texas to come to the conference. Â Wow!
But this little update is really about what happened in Chicago while I was waiting for the next plane. Â I noticed a young man speaking with one of the flight attendants. Â He was obviously frustrated. Â In a minute or two, he sat next to me and continued to speak with this woman. Â She turned to me and said, “He doesn’t speak English and he wants to do something with Facebook.” Â In my pathetic Spanish I asked him what was the problem. Â I soon discovered that he was trying to contact someone via Facebook and didn’t realize that the WiFi was not free. Â Realizing that it was something about his ticket, I offered to call the person in Miami, which I did and he spoke with her on my cell phone. Â When he was finished, I noticed that he got the number from the back of a Spanish booklet that clearly indicated an affiliation with the Baptist Evangelical Church someplace, so I asked him where he was from. Â He said, “Cuba.” Â That lead to a broken conversation about his life and I discovered that he is a pastor of a small church in Cuba and had received government permission to attend a conference in Kansas City. Â He was on the same flight I was taking. Â So when it came time to board, I took him with me and told the flight attendants at the gate, “This man is from Cuba. Â He doesn’t speak English. Â I’m taking him to his seat on the plane.”
He was grateful, but more importantly, the staff at the gate all looked up at me and said, “That is such a nice thing for you to do.”
Lesson: Â random acts of kindness change the world – even for those who simply observe it. Â This one was a God-arranged event.
Try it yourself.
Amen! – This, is the only way to “fly!” Be kind to one another. Be the kind kind. To whom may I show lovingkindness/chesed/mercy toward today? My family? My friends? My neighbor ( the one who is near?)
Many times we are so blinded by the BIGNESS of the LORD that we do not see HIM in the midst.
The GOOD Lord knows and I find HIM absolutely amazing how HE can bring two people together to be able to bless one another. One in need and one who is willing.
Thank YOU LORD for this man and Father we pray for that Ministry in the little congregation that he is leading and will be a real vessel of honor as he takes his rightful position in YOU to be so.
May he be humbled and may he have an open heart to YOUR WORD and to YOUR Interpretation.
Thank You LORD for Skip , who showed patience, concern and brought it together with action .
In JESUS NAME I thank YOU
Amen Carl
This is a great story illustrating the value of awareness and willingness. The awareness of self in the midst of community and the willingness to be interrupted.
Preach the Gospel at all times and when necessary use words. – Francis of Assisi
So, was he attending your seminar? Did you get his contact info?
I went on the St. Joe, MO.and had a wonderful time with people from all over the midwest. He stayed in Kansas City for his conference. But he had my card and my invitation to La Palabra del Dia
What is the UTR for La Palabra del Dia
*URL
Sorry. My mistake. It is La Palabra de Hoy and it is an auto responder like 30 Days to a Hebrew Worldview. I can sign you up if you want, but it is only 30 days long.
Thank you. Please sign me up for both the English and Spanish. It might help me develop a working theological Spanish. I came off the boat (plane) from Cuba over 50 years ago when I was 4.
Done
Wow, a beautiful testimony, of being sensitive and alert in your spirit to avail to someone’s needs.
Thank you for sharing, that ABBA is ever caring and watchful over His own.
Baruch Hashem , “chesed” does it remind us of some teaching? praise Abba for your obedience!
John 13:35 “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.”
Linda K. Morales Bayamo’n Puerto Rico
Our lesson today at church is about Solomon, who was very wise. After reading Ecclesiastes I feel that the one thing Solomon never realized was the joy of giving something away every day. What ever is given should be a gift that can’t be returned to you. It is not a gift if the person you give to has to earn your gift or has to return something of value to you. There is joy in giving if it is truly a gift without obligation.
Random acts of kindness bring a double blessing. The recipient is definitely blessed, however, if done with the right motive and heart (not expecting or wanting anything in return), I think the giver is blessed even more. I know that when I actually take the opportunity to perform a random act of kindness, it is typically the highlight of the day for me. I believe the ability to recognize the opportunities and then to act on them is an awesome gift of God. I also believe it is a gift that God has given to each one of us if we just choose to recieve it and use it. Another awesome characteristic of a random act of kindness is it typically costs you nothing other than a little bit of time. And quite often, it doesn’t even cost you any time because it is done within the framework of what you are already doing. It cost Skip absolutely nothing to befriend this man from Cuba, yet I am sure the man from Cuba was blessed, Skip was blessed, and the gate staff were blessed. What an awesome use of the time that God has equally given to each one of us.
Skip, thanks for sharing this with us and reminding us that opportunities to perform random acts of kindness are all over the place if we go out each day with the intent of seeing them and acting upon them. And each time we do a random act of kindness, blessings abound! What an awesome gift of God!
So true. Thanks for sharing with us.
Hi Skip, We enjoyed the conference sooo much! You are an amazingly gifted teacher and the sessions filled in many gaps in our understanding, gave us totally new things to think about, and generated tons of dialogue between us on the way home. I can’t tell you how helpful attending the conference has been already, and I expect we will continue to reap the benefits. We have a Sunday night Bible study in our home (in addition to our study on Shabbat held in the next town.) Tonite the other families were unable to attend, so instead of our scheduled study we were able to spend most of our time discussing your teachings with our kids. It is so comforting to feel secure in what we are passing on to them… thanks again for teaching us. Also, after your awesome testimony about the Cuban pastor I was challenged to watch for opportunities for those random acts of kindness and of course found them… and yes, that included praying for protection for that other driver instead of riding his bumper after he cut us off in traffic! Seriously though, your willingness to present the uncomfortable historical events and to discuss the implications, all the implications, of those events and the things we have misunderstood for years and the effects of our paradigms/understanding what those paradigms are is truly freeing… Our gratitude to Sandy for her hard work organizing the conference, to you for you accepting this assignment, and of course to our Father for leading us all!
Thank you for sharing. It is funny how I, and others I am sure, do not even see what we are doing as “random acts of kindness”. I too was “helping” another a while back, simply because I could. There was no thought put into it, she needed help and I did my best to help. The whole thing just was. However, afterwards another lady came up to me who happen to witness the happening. She shared with me how she had been blessed by my “act of kindness” I did not know how to respond as I did nothing but help. I was blessed simply because she was. It was like a blessing circle 🙂
Hi all, thanks for sharing random acts of kindness with us all. I think we underestimate a lot of the ‘nice’ things that we do just out of the goodness of YHVH in our hearts. To add a little ‘worldliness’ to this, I was reading the other day that acts of kindness do something to us physically as well. Apparently, when we do an act of kindness, we release seratonin in brain – if I have my info correct, that is what they give people for depression. However, not only does it release seratonin in the givers brain, but it also releases it in the recipients brain. And just for good measure, it releases it in the brain of anyone witnessing the act of kindness. How amazing is our Creator to be able release all those ‘good feelings’ in soooo many peoples lives all because one person does one good or nice thing for another. WOW!
My deepest appreciation to Sandy for organizing this weekend and also to Skip for his time and teachings! It was a huge blessing, not to mention, life changing. I’m looking forward to exercising my Yetzer HaTov (inclination for good) more. That illustration and the story about Skip’s interaction with the Cuban guy really struck a chord with me. I’ve been a follower of Today’s Word and Skip’s teachings for some time and I have never commented on here before. I’m not eloquent in my speech, nor am I good at sharing all of my head knowledge/proving a point. But, I am interested in and definitely can, live what I know. Yes, not always easy, but something I find I can actually do easier than I can speak with all my words jumbled together. So, I admire those, like Skip, who can teach unbelievably well and are gifted with taking what you know and communicating it to others in such an engaging fashion, I never tire of listening (even though I felt like we had a year’s worth of hebrew seminary teaching in 2 days!) My brain is still processing it all, but what a fantastic weekend! Thanks for coming to KC, Skip! Please come again next year!
Shalom!