Thankful Thursday: Acts of Kindness

It’s Thursday and I’m thankful for acts of kindness.

One act in particular stands out in my mind for two reasons: One, it’s fairly recent and two, it’s never happened to me before…Allow me to explain.

In October 2012, I relocated from the East Coast to the Midwest in order to take my first big break in Journalism. Well, things didn’t go as planned and long story short, by mid-December 2012 I was packing up my apartment in order to move back home.

During this time, I experienced a wide range of emotions with everything from being upset at the unfair situations beyond my control that caused me to need to leave to actually being happy because the state I moved to had freezing cold weather like I’d never before experienced.

Somewhere in the midst of my packing up my belongings and getting my apartment ready for the next tenant, I heard a knock at my door. After looking through the peephole, I recognized my neighbor from across the hall, Lindsey who worked as a school teacher and has two adorable kids who baked me cookies for Christmas (but that’s another story). I opened the door with a smile, always happy to see such a positive person. Lindsey returned the smile with a greeting and handed me a card inside of an envelope.

“Thanks,” I said as I took the card and entered into a brief conversation. 

After we spoke, I shut my apartment door and locked it. As I walked toward my kitchen counter, I opened the envelope fully intending to hang the card on my refrigerator door where I had posted all of my other Christmas cards from family and friends. But as I retrieved the card from the envelope and opened it, my eyes grew wide at the contents: Money! There was cash inside, plenty of it. I rushed back to my apartment door and into the hallway. In a matter of seconds, I was knocking on Lindsey’s door which she opened and greeted me with a knowing smile.

“Thank you so much!” I told her from the depths of my heart.

“You’re welcome,” Lindsey replied before giving an explanation. “I’d been thinking about your moving and praying about it and that is what God told me you needed.”

“Well I’m glad you listened to God!” I replied. “It is what I need, Lord knows!”

~*~

My neighbor’s act of kindness touched my heart and renewed my faith in God as Jehovah Jireh which means My Provider because He used Lindsey to help me meet a financial need.

Now that I’ve fully settled back into my home on the East Coast and am continuing my search for a better paying job, I know that God is with me because He spoke through events, people and acts of kindness when I was residing in the Midwest and He continues to work in my life today.

Are you facing a tough turn of events in your life? Are you unsure about the future? Take heart in my sharing one of the lessons I learned when I was away from home and that is simply, even when God is silent, He is still right there with me. Honestly, I’m facing the great unknown when it comes to my career and search for work but when fear tries to overtake me, I remember all the ways God provided for me through people’s acts of kindness. Therefore, I choose to keep trusting Him and move forward in faith because sometimes that’s all you can do.

It’s Thursday. What are you thankful for?