Trials that Bless

Arkansas State’s head football coach, Blake Anderson, expected last week’s game against the University of Georgia to be an emotional one.  He had missed coaching the first game of the season, in order to spend time with his family after his wife’s death on August 19.  Wendy Anderson had endured two years of breast cancer.  Blake and Wendy had been married almost 27 years.  Coach Anderson shared, “Praise Him that she hurts no more and is in His presence now and forever.”  Upon hearing of the death of Wendy Anderson, Dwight Standridge, a Georgia alumnus, tweeted out a message to fans asking them to wear pink to the game in memory of the Arkansas State’s coach’s wife.  When interviewed, Standridge commented that he had lost his own mother to ovarian cancer when she was 37 years of age.  He knew than even if the fans had not experienced cancer in their own family, they knew of someone who had or was currently fighting cancer.  Upon entering the football field, Coach Anderson and his team were met with a stadium full of fans wearing pink shirts amidst a fewer number of the usual red and black.  After the game, Blake Anderson tweeted, “OVERWHELMED, HONORED, and BEYOND GRATEFUL.” #NotFightingAlone.  Dwight Standridge used a past loss in his family to bless a grieving coach and football team.  The University of Georgia football team and fans won more than a football game on Saturday.

Christine Turel works in a bookstore in a town with a large university.  Recently, in the middle of the day, an older lady came in to shop.  She commented how much she liked the bookstore and wished she had longer to spend looking around, but her husband was waiting in the car.  She placed some art supplies on the counter and then thought to buy some chocolate for her husband.  As they finished the transaction, a college student walked up to make his purchase.  The lady turned around, told the young man to place his textbooks on the counter so she could buy them for him.  The young man refused to let her pay, knowing the books would cost over $400, but the lady insisted.  She added a Harry Potter book to the stack and also piled on some chocolates.  As Christine bagged the purchases, the young man thanked the lady and gave her a hug.  As they both told the lady how kind and thoughtful the gesture was she responded , “It’s important to be kind.  You can’t know all the times that you’ve hurt people in tiny, significant ways.  It’s easy to be cruel without meaning to be.  There’s nothing you can do about that.  But you can choose to be kind.  Be kind.”  After the young man left, the lady turned to Christine and continued, “My son is a homeless meth addict.  I don’t know what I did.  I see that boy and I see the man my son could have been if someone had chosen to be kind to him at just the right time.”  Even in her pain and disappointment, the lady was willing to reach out to a young university student so he could possibly avoid experiencing her son’s consequences.  Christine Turel concluded, “You never know how your actions may effect others around you, so you might as well be kind to all.”

What encouraging examples of people who used the lessons learned from past hurts and disappointments to reach out and bless others.  May we, too, not waste our trials, but be willing to trust God to teach and comfort us so we in turn can offer comfort and hope to others in their time of need.

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.

2 Corinthians 1:3-4