Random Acts of Care

One of the stories my father told me, and I included in his eulogy years later, was one of caring for our fellow human beings. He was driving along this road late one night and saw someone parked on the shoulder with a flat tire, struggling to change it. As this was well before cell phones, and in a place where it may be hours before a police cruiser passed, my father stopped to help him. It was evident from the start, the man did not know what he was doing, so my father took the tire iron and changed the tire for him. When the man took out his wallet and tried to pay for the job, my father refused the money and, instead, told him this. "You know how you can repay me? Next time you see someone in need where you can do something, help them. If they offer you payment, tell them to pass on the act as payment in full."

While skimming through the headlines this morning, all sorts of horrors were reported, from the Taliban killing a young engaged couple to a 13-year old being accused of theft in Illinois. But then one link caught my eye and I read it through (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/30092624/).

In this story, a team of Wyoming snow plows escorted a gentlemen through a blizzard with white-out conditions to the hospital 250 miles from his home so he could receive a long-awaited transplant. I think it wasn't so much the fact that this man finally received his transplant as the fact that several others (a 911-dispatcher, a police officer, and a WDOT boss) took it upon themselves to steer away from their job's official procedure and choose to do what they could to help a fellow human being. In today's economy, jobs are getting scarce. I can easily envision a WDOT accountant complaining that the State shouldn't have wasted the money on a convoy of plows for one man. Sadly, any of those people who helped may have jeopardized their job, and even their family's welfare, in doing so. But they did it anyway.

Too many times in our lives, we just follow the procedures. We move like sheep following one shepherd or another, but rarely the One in our hearts whose only request was to love one another. With that loving flows the incentive to help one another, reaching out to others who may not be part one group or another we proclaim ourselves to be members of, but out to another human being who shares this small blue planet with us.

I'm certain if I hunted for them, I could find other news stories like these. But I think most "good deeds" go unrecorded, best paid if we return to the favor to a fellow human being in need.

- ESA