neighbour

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I Had An Urge I Could Not Let Go Of

I think we all have urges to do something for others. They’re not “all the time” urges, and they’re certainly not “anyone” urges, but we get the urge at times to help someone out.

It might be someone you don’t know, or maybe a neighbour. It could be some cause that stirs you to do something.

It might happen often, or those times may be few and far between.

But when it happens, we can’t help but do something; the urge is overwhelming and we have to act.

I remember years ago starting out on our first day of vacation. We had our van loaded and we were towing our travel trailer to our vacation spot.

We probably weren’t more than twenty minutes on the highway when I saw smoke in my side mirror. I quickly pulled over and found that one of the trailer tires was shredded to bits.

We were on the side of a major highway; it was early morning with people in a hurry to get to work. You could feel the trailer sway when the cars and especially the trucks whipped by.

I started to change the tire on the side of the road and probably was no more than five minutes in and a guy from our church pulled up behind me to help.

He had seen it all, driven to the next exit, turned around and, in order to get to us on the divided highway, drove back past us in the opposite lanes, turned around at the closest exit and came to help.

Amazing! That’s that urge that causes us to do something for others; when everyone else is flying by, we have the urge to do something.

This week I got to spend one night at both my daughter’s and son’s places.

There is something about helping out your kids that you can’t resist doing, even though they are on their own, and have jobs to support themselves.

I found myself looking for ways to help out. What did they need? What could I do to give them a hand?

My daughter needed to get a few groceries the night I stayed with her, and though I added a few things of my own to the basket, I had this urge to pay for it all.

She’s my daughter; I’ve been providing for her her whole life and it’s difficult to turn that off now that she’s an adult.

The next night I had dinner with my son and, of course, I paid for dinner. But back at his place I noticed there were a few things he needed. Before I left in the morning I hit up a hardware store and Walmart and got him set up.

These were all things they could have done themselves but I had this urge in me to help.

It happens sometimes; it happens with family and sometimes with complete strangers.

The bottom line is those urges make a real difference to people. We should never ignore them.

Here’s the thing: After God created people, it took no time before we rejected Him for our selfish wants and desires … and humanity has been on that path ever since. Yet even though we rejected Him, God had the urge to help us, to bring us back to Him. We call that love. He acted on that urge by sending His Son, Jesus, to die for our rejection of Him – our sin. That urge not only can help us now, it can help us for eternity. Aren’t you glad God acted on His urge to do something for others? Reflect on that.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: When was the last time you acted on the urge to do something for others? Leave your comments below.

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The World Just Got Small . . . er

 

They say the world’s a small place, that there’s not a lot of separation between all of us on this planet. I experienced this the other day.

six_degrees_of_separation

I now have under three hundred connections through “Linkedin” but they say that my network is over 5 million professionals. I’m not sure what that means or how that works, but just the other day I saw it in action.

Have you ever had a random encounter? I was once on a beach on Lake Huron (Sauble Beach), late in the afternoon when the normally packed beach had thinned out.

Sauntering up the beach towards us was a man who looked vaguely familiar. It turned out to be “The Great One’s” dad – that’s Wayne Gretzky’s dad, Walter, for those who don’t know hockey.

He stopped, and we chatted hockey in the middle of July on a hot, sunny day, on a beach half way up the coast of the third largest Great Lake.

But that’s nothing! I’m on my way to single-handedly prove the theory of “Six degrees of separation” to be true. The theory states that everyone is just six steps or fewer away from any other person in the world. And this is how it works …

I was out shovelling the other day with my wife. We stopped to talk to our next door neighbour at the bottom of our driveway.

Meanwhile, there was a man playing in the snow with his children, in this same neighbour’s yard, and I noted to myself that there was something familiar about him.

As we continued to talk with our neighbour, another woman came along. She and her family were staying with our neighbour for the weekend.

In our conversation, my wife, Lily, asked the visitor where she was from and she replied, “Toronto”.  Now Toronto is a big place – over 6 million people live in the GTA.

It’s not the kind of place you say, “Oh, I know someone from there. Do you know my cousin Vinny?” That’s ridiculous.

But Lily did ask another question, “What part of Toronto are you from?”  And the reply came “Etobicoke”.  That’s when I – a born and raised “Trontonian” – got into the conversation.

I casually said that I grew up in Etobicoke, more specifically Rexdale. At that a smile came over this woman’s face and she said, “We’re from Rexdale! What street did you live on?”

I was sure our game would end here. I said it was just a little, tiny dead end keyhole street …Restever Gate. Hearing that name, her eyes got really big and jumped out of her sockets about three inches before they snapped back into place.

When I saw her reaction, in a flash it all came back to me. I twirled around, pointed at the man in my neighbour’s front yard and shouted the man’s last name.

This guy grew up on the same street I did, just two doors down! Though I’m a lot older than he, I remember him as the little guy my brother and I would have fun conversations with at the end of our driveway.

Now he’s 45, and I haven’t seen him in about 38 years. We had a great chat and I can’t stop thinking about that encounter.

Here’s the thing: If you think that’s as wild a connection as I do, try this one:  you are only a prayer away from the Creator of the world, AND you can talk to Him every single day and He can be with you every moment of every day.

That’s Life!

Paul

Question: What amazing encounter have you had? Leave your comment below.