|
Main Page
Shopping Mini-Mall
Current Menu
Times
Free Press Archives
|
|
THERE ARE NO SMALL ACTS OF LOVE
10-16-09
A lady from Ohio responded to my Sunday Journal
in which I told how I felt I had been a failure in my first teaching job
in Athens. For decades I had carried this awesome wet blanket of guilt.
Then I played the Pumpkintown Festival in Athens and a student in that
first class walked up and told me I was the best teacher he ever had.
For three years now, he’s come to those festivals, carried my guitar to
the car and made me feel ten feet tall.
The thing that impressed me about his praise was that everything he
remembered was something that seemed small to me. The Ohio lady shared
an experience in which she did something so tiny for someone she didn’t
think a thing about it at the time but many years later she discovered
it meant the world to the person. She said, “It was just a small act of
love.”
I have decided there are no small acts of love. If we did the same
“small” act of love for 100 people, it would mean something different to
each person. Among the 100 people, there might be one person whose life
it would literally save. There might be one or two for whom it would
turn the page to a beautiful new life. It might revive enough hope in
one person that they would not go through with a plan to commit suicide.
That actually happened to me. I was leaving a nightclub one night after
a gig and the place seemed empty and dark but I became aware of a lady
sitting alone. I checked on her talked and could see she was deeply
depressed. I went to the car and got a book and gave it to her. Later
she told me she definitely would have killed herself that night if not
for the book and someone caring.
Again, I ask, “What’s a small act of love?” Ask yourself what were the
small and big acts of love your parents did for you. With your mother
was it the act of letting you nurse at her body? Or was it changing your
diaper? Or was it praying and comforting you one night when a storm was
shaking the house? Was it a tuition check when you were far away in
college? The
more you think, the more you will realize that every single act of love
seems equally special to you.
Love is the fundamental energy of the Universe. How do I know that? I
know it because as I review my entire life, I realize that nothing has
meant as much to me. Review your life the same way and I am certain you
will agree. Nothing -- absolutely nothing -- means as much to us as
love.
Jesus said the seeds of love we sow reproduce good in the world
thirty-fold, sixty-fold or a hundred-fold. Before we sow a seed (do a
loving act) we need not sit and ponder, “Is this a 30, 60 or 100 fold
seed.” It will depend on a million or more variables. And it really
doesn’t matter. It will mean exactly what it is supposed to mean to
every human being who is influenced by it.
Just the kindness in the eyes of a great soul can rebirth hope and
healing in us. I learned this from our school nurse, Miss Langston. I
hated school so strongly that I often acted sick just to go to the “sick
room.”
Miss Langston had glasses as thick as a Coke bottle and when I looked at
her, they made her eyes look as big as a cup. Those were the kindest
eyes I have ever seen. She didn’t lay on hands to heal me. She laid on
eyes!
To this day I can see her eyes as clearly as I can see Lookout Mountain.
It was such a small act. Or was it?
|
