Welcome back to Beliefnet’s exclusive Bill Hybels devotional, “Living with Grander Vision.” This feed will appear in your profile every day for three full weeks. Did you miss any entries? Just stay subscribed, and the feed will begin again at the end of its cycle.
I was on the road for a speaking engagement and decided to spend a few private moments with God at a local café. Forty-five minutes and several cups of coffee later, I was walking back to my car, bracing against the blowing snow that was pounding my face, when almost audibly I received a prompting from God. He seemed to tell me to turn around, but I just kept on walking. It was cold. I didn’t want to be late for my engagement. Honestly, I just didn’t feel like being obedient. Which was ironic, given I’d just come off nearly an hour of devotional time.
To my dismay, his voice wasn’t subdued by my obstinacy. “Turn around,” he prompted again.
I turned to look behind me and saw absolutely nothing there. See, God? I silently sneered. But as I wheeled back around, I saw an elderly woman–probably at least eighty-five–who had been dropped off by a city bus and was standing on the corner a few feet in front of me. She was shuffling toward the entrance of a shop but was stymied by the wall of snow that
blocked it.
I caught her eye, and smiling, asked, “How are you going to get over that snow bank?”
Without missing a beat, she said, “It’s gonna be pretty tough unless you help me, Sonny!”
Looking down the street a little, I noticed that the snowy obstacle outlined the sidewalk for blocks. I kicked the chunks of snow down a little and found inches-thick ice underneath. Even clutching my arm, there was no way she could step across the bank without slipping.
“Ma’am, I’m not sure how to tell you this, but the only way I can help you is to lift you over this thing.”
She paused for a moment. “Well I can’t stay here all day! Lift away, but you’d better be careful.” She loosened her posture as an early sign that she was ready to trust a guy she’d never seen before. As gently as I could, I lifted her over the snow bank and set her down just outside the store entrance. A frail hand on my shoulder, she said, “Thank you for helping me. You’re a nice young man.”
That was the extent of what happened that morning, God tapping one of his saints on the shoulder and saying, “Please help out.” It might have been insignificant in the grand scheme of things, but helping that old lady get where she was trying to go proved far more meaningful than all of the intellectually stimulating things I did that day put together. It’s so like God, isn’t it?
___
What motivates you to meet someone’s need when you don’t “feel like” doing it? Spend several minutes sitting quietly, asking God who in your life has a practical need you might meet today. How does God see this person and their situation? What is the correlation between your willingness to follow through with the act of kindness and your relationship with God?