Well, Saturday was our first Serve Cincinnati meeting.
I am...overwhelmed.
I'm trying really hard not to be.
I think I'm getting big picture-itis again.
The hearts of the 8 people that showed up Saturday morning were so big there was barely any space left in the room.
We talked about why we serve. Some of the answers were:
Because I know what it's like to be unseen and I want to help people be seen
I want to see them smile
I have been blessed with so much, and I want to give back
I want to help my kids see that their world isn't the only world
I want to help bring people out of situations they can't get out of themselves
So many more. But it was amazing to hear the hearts of these people and know they chose this group because they wanted to serve more. Many of them have so many other things going on in their life. School, kids, work and they are still as they said, "Squeezing serving in wherever they can"
I am so deeply humbled by the hearts of people at my church.
At the end of the meeting Peggy, Stephanie and I took 4 dozen donuts up to the Fields-Ertle shopping area and gave them to 4 stores employees. We said thank you to them for working on Saturday mornings and being cheerful.
It was just donuts.
But it was donuts.
One of the shops we gave them to was Bath and Body Works (yum!). The woman that was there said she was in town helping the store out from Arkansas. She said that just the night before she was telling people that no one in Ohio was nice. She said that we changed her mind.
Serving, it can and often is about helping radically hundreds of people.
It can and should be about feeding the hungry and clothing the naked.
These are big things, these are important things.
But Saturday, it also helped me see that sometimes we forget it's about smiling and encouraging people in the most mundane situations and places.
I've worked retail for a long time. Saturday mornings....when you were out the night before, when you have friends and family you'd rather be with, when it's a lovely day outside and you would rather be anywhere but waiting on people.....Saturday mornings sort of stink.
Donuts help.
Donuts won't save the world, they won't cause someone to fall down on their knees and cross the line of faith.
But they help.
How have you helped today?
1 comment:
I think doing the small serving thing says so much more to alot of people than the big picture. Many of the people in retail don't see the big picture and truely appreciate the little things.
I think that was the coolest thing I've heard in a long time. Kudos.
And while you may not be saving a country all at once, you can save your fellow man one smile at a time. With one smile you can build an army of servers to save a whole country.
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