The Spirit of Meaning Well

I usually pick up little scraps of trash in public places.  About half the time I strike up jolly little conversations with the folks in the check out line with me.  I almost always say “Have a nice day” to the cashier before they say it to me.  I’m quick to smile and laugh with a child I don’t know.  When my heart says to throw whatever coins I have in my change purse into a collection bucket, I don’t ignore it.  I try to always remember to wipe off the counters in  a public restroom after I’ve washed my hands.  I never think while I’m doing these things that someone is going to clap me on the back with a “good job” or a “wish I could be more like you”.  They are just ways I behave.

I have benefited so much from others acts of kindness.  I have to work, though, to not feel guilty accepting it.  I’ve said it before, but that tiny acknowledgment to myself, that reminder not to feel guilt… I need that.  Otherwise I start taking people for granted.  That whole process may take a minute for me.  Usually not longer.  I’m glad to not be a person mired in guilt, though.  Because it seems to me that people who accept a lot of guilt for the nice ways people treat them often are not the people I want to be around.  Not because they make me feel bad, a gloom that hangs over them like a cloud, but because I have to work really hard in their company.  Work to keep my joy… work to not always see the negative side of something… work to not gossip… work to hold onto my responsibilities and not be carried away by the tide of victimization.  Work to be true to who I am and the spark that God put in me.

Yesterday I ranted on a bit (yes… it was a rant… it happens sometimes) about how well meaning folks take it all to the extreme and make it political.  What is the popular identity now?  Compassionate conservative.  YECH!  What a truly nasty way to drag a wonderful reaction into the muck of politics.  Not sure I want to be that.  So I’ll keep my nose in my own business and try to help when God tugs, my church asks or I happen to be in the right place at the right time.  Cause then I will KNOW, without a shadow of a doubt, that I do it for His glory and not a political pat on the back.

Meanwhile, I pray and plead and hope that anybody who homeschools their children recognizes it as the immense repsonsibility it is, no matter how it looks to those on the outside.  I’ll also pray that, no matter how rotten a job it looks like some do, I am the one that the well meaning complain to about them so I can say “hey, wait… you don’t know the whole story.  Be generous to them and kindly pray for them so that no matter what it may look like on the outside, God will be working on the inside to equip that student for the place He has planned for them as an adult.”