Just a few years ago, which after this last 12 months seems
like another era, I witnessed an event at Penn Station that still moves
me. I was seated at a crowded food court. With time on my hands before my train, I was
enjoying a little something that I hoped was gluten-free (a diet prompted by
genetics rather than preference).
A dozen steps away was a man behind a counter selling ice-cream
snacks. With shuffling steps a gaunt,
old, grey panhandler approached. His
hand pulled something from the pocket of his ill-fitting battered
trousers. I could see that it was some
change, which he was counting as he shambled toward the counter. There was a look of desire in his eyes, which
took on a saddened cast as he paused, counted again, and turned away, just a
few feet from the ice-cream counter. His
sum of pocket change was short.
I was not the only one watching. At another end of the counter was a mother,
enjoying ice-cream with her two teen-age boys.
A quick word from the mother to the older and taller son sent him on his
way. A couple of minutes and a brief
conversation later the boy returned, escorting the old man. In short order the man left again, with joy
on his face and a tall, full ice-cream cone in his hand that just a few minutes
before did not hold enough change.
That was it. That was
the end of the story. Or was it? A small expense became a rich lesson from
mother to son. The mother could have
done nothing, or she might have called out to the disappointed man. She sent her son and gave him a personal
experience in kindness that the boy may long remember into manhood.
The service was not requested.
It was spontaneously offered. The
gift, the effort, the quick initiative, was a small event converted into a
teaching moment by a mother drawing from ready wells of charity. I feel confident that the mother did not know
that I was a witness, as her attention was on both sons and on a man who could
have a moment of disappointment, reinforcing his penury, converted into a
bright memory of happiness. Which was
sweeter for him, the ice-cream or the friendly attention? I suspect that the mother and her sons gained
a happiness, too, sensing how their simple act of humanity toward a fellow
child of God connected them all in a moment of goodness.
This was charity. I do
not refer to the price of the ice-cream but to what made it a gift. The scriptures define this charity as the
pure love of Christ, which can well up from our hearts in precisely the method
and moment when it is needed. There was
nothing premeditated in the event. It
was just a mother from her fountain of love, blessing a luckless man, a son and
his brother, and at least one witness who will hope to remain vigilant for when
such opportunities cross my path.
Surely there are greater acts of love than this. Yet millions of such small personal kindnesses
are a contagious mortar that builds a community.
I am grateful for mothers who feel to teach that to their sons.
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