Be Caring

You’ve seen him. He’s the old man on the corner who’s mower has just broken down. It's Spring in Texas. It's time to trim off the brown grass and let the new growth get some sunlight. He's been eyeing his weeds all week.

You’d go talk to him, but you figure now isn’t the time. He seems pretty disgusted at his predicament.

But really, now is the time. Now is when he needs someone to offer to help him out. He’s pretty independent and wants to get his mower fixed. But don’t you think he’d appreciate your offer to cut his grass just this once while he figures out what he wants to do with his mower?

There’s always someone who needs help with something. They’re just working by themselves because they know everyone else is too busy to help them.

It’s true we’re all busy. But we’re compassionate, caring people too. Being a caring person involves more than just showing respect, lending an ear, or offering to help, but I’ll start with those three things.

We often show respect to policemen, firemen, doctors, and nurses. What would happen to our world if we regularly showed respect to everyone? If we showed respect for the person inside the skin, it would become contagious.

If the old man won’t let you mow his grass, but invites you to stay for a lemonade, maybe his greatest need is a caring person to talk to. Let him know that you have a spare twenty minutes to visit and watch that refreshing smile come over his face.

Being caring means not turning away from an opportunity to help someone who needs it.

Today’s goal is: show your caring heart to someone who needs to see it. Walk down your street and offer your hand to a neighbor who needs help planting flowers or pulling weeds or mowing the lawn.

Always approach with gentleness and ask first. People need caring neighbors, but be careful that you don’t run too fast to an opportunity that you smash up against it like it was a brick wall. Go slow. Have a plan. Be prepared.

There was a little girl wanted a pet so bad she couldn’t wait for her parents to find her one, so she went into the back yard and found a bug. She ran to her mommy and said she found a pet. She lifted her hand to show the bug she held between her thumb and finger.

“Can I hold it?” The mom smiled, determined to allow the girl a moment of joy before the truth was revealed.

The girl pulled back her hands. “No. I don’t want it to fly away.”

“It won’t fly away.”

The girl opened her grip and the bug fell into the mom’s hand, but one of the wings was still stuck to the girl’s thumb and finger. When the girl realized she’d squeezed the bug to death in her excitement, she angrily slapped the bug out of her mommy’s hand, dusted the bug parts off her own hand and wailed through the pain of loss.

We can love our opportunities so much that we smother them or squeeze them to death. We should approach an opportunity as we would a butterfly that’s about to land on our finger. And when we’re through showing respect, lending an ear, or helping out, then let the butterfly fly free. There will be another one later.