A church sign I drive past nearly every morning currently reads: “Practice random acts of kindness.”  As I read that I thought of my favorite Christmas gift ever.  Each year my family gives one big gift at Christmas.  Only, this gift often feels more like receiving than giving.  We decide as a family what charity we want to either do or donate to.  One year we chose to do random acts of kindness for people we didn’t know.  We looked for opportunities to help, show kindness, or just cause someone to smile.  One of our acts of kindness that Christmas season was to pay for the family’s dinner in the car behind us at a drive thru window.  The surprise and delight the clerk showed in receiving the money to pay for the customers behind us was contagious, and we couldn’t help but smile also.

Then, one day, I was the recipient of just such an act of kindness.  As I went to pay for my meal at a drive thru, the clerk told me the person in the car in front of us had already paid.  Caroline and I had just been having a conversation about where we see Jesus in our every day lives, and I had noticed the bumper sticker on the vehicle in front of us with the baby Jesus.  I smiled, wondering if they had been the recipient of some act of kindness and, perhaps, it had come back full circle.  I certainly saw Jesus in that moment.  I felt God with us.  There is no better gift than that.  Read Luke 6:27-38, and remember: God loves YOU unconditionally.

Annie