Random Acts of Kindness

I've been hearing about random acts of kindness from every direction lately. I'm doing a "Live Like You Were Dying" bible study at the YMCA right now and last week we talked about "loving deeper". We discussed different ways we could all go out of our way to help someone and what types of extravegant love people had shown us throughout our lives. At work, the newsroom is working on a story called "Making a Difference" with a local radio station (107.1). The goal is to spread goodwill throughout Central Iowa by asking people to pay for the person behind them at the drive through. Anyway, the point of my post is not that I've done anything, but that last night someone did something for me.

I turned on to my street last night on my way back from my picnic and I heard a noise that sounded like someone's smoke alarms were going off. When I pulled into my garage I figured out that they were mine. I had been gone for about four hours and I'm still not sure how long they were going off, but I hope it wasn't all afternoon. I had my windows open so the whole neighborhood could hear them, oops! Thankfully, my house was not on fire. The problem was just a low battery in the one in the living room. I was almost in tears because I went through the entire house taking out all the batteries (and they were still blaring) when a neighbor I hadn't met yet came walking up my driveway. Brian is a voluteer fireman and he came to see if he could help me. How nice is that!!! He helped me haul in my enormous ladder to change the battery in the living room and finally they stopped. As if that wasn't nice enough, he came back an hour or so later to make sure that I got all the batteries back in and got them all hooked up again correctly. I'm so thankful to live in such a great neighborhood with so many nice people!

Now... I've been blessed with a random act of kindness and I plan to pay it forward soon. How about you?