Friday, April 6, 2012

The dinner a stranger paid for...

God has been teaching me so much about gratefulness and blessings lately.  I mean... I've been close to overwhelmed each day by at least one thing that God points out specifically that He has blessed me with.  Our life is nowhere near what some would consider perfect...even what I might consider perfect, but God has provided all we need for right now and I am filled with thankfulness for His grace and mercy.

Last night we went out to dinner at the Mexican restaurant down the street from our house.  We were eating our chips and chatting, while taking turns wrangling our wiggly, little, one year old, when the man who had been sitting alone in the booth behind me finished and stood to walk to the cashier.  He quickly laid a $20 bill on our table and said, "Use this to help pay for dinner and Happy Easter."  I barely had time to say, "Thank You." before he had walked off...I never even saw his face.  He was a gruff looking, construction worker type.  I watched him walk out through the parking lot and we were kind of blown away.  We've never had a stranger do something like that for us before.  We finished our dinner (left the $20 for our server as a tip) - but when the cashier rang us up she stated, "That will be $20.78.", the thought popped into my head that, "He paid the whole price."  A stranger bought us dinner.  But somehow that reminded me that Someone I've never met in the physical sense...Someone I've never actually seen the face of - paid the whole price for all the wrong that I've ever done.  Did the stranger know he would have a profound effect on someone because he, for reasons I will never know, laid a $20 bill on my table?  I doubt it...but in turn we were able to bless the server with the tip...and I saw kindness in the world...I saw Jesus through that man.  I was confronted with the question for myself- how many times have I not followed the tug to do a small kindness, thinking, "Well, it won't make much difference anyway..." - when someone could have seen Jesus through that action???

"Christ has no body on earth but yours, no hands but yours, no feet but yours.  Yours are the eyes through which Christ's compassion for the world is to look out; yours are the feet with which He is to go about doing good; and yours are the hands with which He is to bless us now."  Saint Teresa of Avila

2 comments:

Cindi said...

LOVE this, Heather!! That's so incredible!

Anonymous said...

Omg people really do this. My daughter called me tonight, she is a struggling single mom. She is away with her 2 small children on a short vacation she can barely afford. They went to eat dinner out for their mini splurge, a women sitting alone by them commented on how well behaved the girls were. They spoke briefly, and the woman left. When my daughter asked for the check, the waiter informed her that the woman paid for their dinner, tip and all. How cool of a blessing is that. Daughter in turn left another tip for the waiter.