ARE YOU FAITHFUL?

FAITHFUL IN SMALL THINGS
By Roberta Messner, Everyday Blessings

I was shopping at an antiques sale in Nashville, Tennessee, and had just purchased a sampler to add to my collection. A little needlework girl shared a bouquet of daises with a neighbor over a picket fence. Below was an old saying: "Actions speak louder than words."

At the final booth, the elderly proprietor overheard me say that I was leaving and freeing up a parking space nearby. He was short-winded, battling emphysema and cancer, he explained, and his wife had just learned she had lung cancer. They had traveled all the way from Maine. "This will be our last show, " he said, shaking his head at his charmingly displayed inventory.

With the chance to have my choice parking spot, the frail man followed me out to the lot to move his vehicle. I started my car and waited, but he never came. "Probably changed his mind and is just going to leave me hanging. I'll give him five more minutes."

Then I spotted him in the rearview mirror, struggling on his cane as he huffed and puffed his way to my car window. "Found an even closer spot, young lady," he said. "One with plenty of room for the wife's wheelchair when we pack up." He pointed to an area nearly a block way, a huge distance for someone in his weak condition. "I wanted to let you know and to thank you again for the kind offer."

This gracious, true-to-his word man had many excuses not to walk that extra distance. It was, after all, a small thing. Yet it had been important to him to treat someone he would never see again the way he would want to be treated.

"Actions speak louder than words." I'd heard that maxim all my life. But now I'd seen it lived.

[Remember: One thing you can give and still keep is your word.]

PRAYER: Father, help me to be faithful in the small things, even when it seems difficult.