A Special Gift

Something amazing happened this week. This event was so huge that I decided to use my space in the bulletin to share it with you. I can feel your curiosity and excitement rising right now, as you wait for me to tell you about this amazing event.

This event made me feel special, appreciated and it gave me the strength to make it through another hot day of work. So what was this amazing event? A man gave me a watermelon from his garden when I pulled up to deliver a package to him.

You might think that I am silly for valuing this so highly and that I have just wasted your time by telling you about it, but this is more than a man giving me a watermelon. This man saw something that most people don’t see when the UPS truck pulls up in their yard, this man saw another human being. While most people grab their package and run away wondering what I have brought them, this man decided to use the fruits of his labor to bless me.

I don’t know if this man is a follower of Christ, but I do know that his action blessed my day and in our selfish world it caused me to wonder: What would happen if Christians intentionally and intensely began looking for ways to bless people in the name of Christ? The answer is obvious: people would want to know what our motivations were and would be pointed to Christ.

Now I am not writing this in order to guilt some gift from you, the watermelon was really not what inspired me. What amazed me was the fact that this man who did not know me thought that I was worthy of his watermelon. And as followers of Christ we possess something much more valuable than a watermelon, we possess the knowledge of God’s amazing grace. So why do we not share this knowledge? Is it because we don’t think some people are worthy enough? Because they are to God, He already paid the price for them on Calvary. Is it because we are afraid of rejection? I imagine that if I declined the watermelon, the man would have given it to someone else and written me off as a jerk because he was just trying to be nice. So we cannot find in our imagination a justifiable reason to horde God to ourselves.

This week each of us will have the opportunity to bless someone, let us seize that opportunity. We may never realize how much that small act of kindness means to that person or what it will inspire them to do. It may brighten their day and it might open the door to changing their eternity.