As the everyday events in our lives unfold, it is often hard to attach any great significance to ordinary things. Yet I still remember the kindness and love extended to me as a young child sitting at the feet of my great grandmother. My first childhood memory is of her patiently teaching me to fold washcloths and put them in a stack. She was born in 1873 and she would tell me stories of growing up on the farm in Oklahoma – working the cotton fields, fixing dinner for a gang of outlaws, and encountering Indians while traveling through the Choctaw Indian territory. I recently read about lamplighters who lived in small towns at the turn of the century. Each evening at dusk, the lamplighter would walk down the street carrying a lantern pole. Walking back and forth across the street he would lift the pole to the wick and bring light along the way with each lamp he lit. When he disappeared into the night, you always knew where he’d been by the points of light he left behind. In seemingly ordinary and insignificant events, my great grandmother was leaving points of light behind. She touched my life with her patience and kindness. She made me feel loved and secure. Family ties were being strengthened as one generation passed its legacy on to another. More often than we realize, it’s the ordinary things that make a significant difference in the lives of others.
How are you investing in ordinary moments to make a different in the lives of others?
