Hope Restored...

Today I received a gift...an absolutely wonderful gift that has infused my hope tank in humanity with so much hope that it is overflowing.

When I went to get my mail, there was my book. The one I left on the airplane. In hope I had left my contact information with the woman who had been my gate agent when I boarded our flight back to Scranton. She had checked on the gate and new that the aircraft wouldn't be leaving again till morning. When she finished her shift she must have gone over from the F terminal to the C terminal and retrieved my book from the seat pocket herself and sent it in the mail. I was just overwhelmed with gratitude. That such a simple thing, yet one that required effort beyond the ordinary on her part, was accomplished and meant so, so much.

That's the way it is, isn't it? It is often small things, yet things that carry such personal significance to us, that mean so much. Yet they require a bit of effort. Usually not too much, but just enough to inconvenience us, or require us to just go out of our way, putting others first. So that's one of those things that should be passed forward.

I am going to make sure United Airlines gets a note, a good kind of note, lauding her for going out of her way to return this personal and precious item for me. And then think of others who could use that little bit of encouragement or affirmation. It is these kinds of thoughts that rattle around in my head when I think about wanting to write about an inconvenient faith: from comfortable complacency (which is where so many of us are...) to contagious compassion, where if we positioned ourselves the world could and would be a better place.

Why not make the world a better place for someone else today the way Mary Hernandez did for me?

Peace.