“Do you have a penny?” she asked as I handed her a five-dollar bill. Searching my pockets, I told her I did not. The bill was $3.01 and I waited for my $1.99 in change. Instead, handing me $2.00, she said with a pleasant smile, “You can owe us a penny. You don’t want all that loose change in your pocket.” Her response somehow made a busy day brighter, even more manageable. 

All of life is a collection of such meetings, most of them brief and on the surface apparently unimportant. And yet, what we make of those encounters determines in many ways the substance of our lives and the value we have been to others. Reinhold Niebuhr once commented that some people see their existence only in heroic terms and wait in vain for that moment or event when they will be able to effect great changes in themselves or in others. For most, such moments and events never come, and too many are left frustrated and disillusioned.

Jesus Christ offers a different kind of understanding. He saw the purpose and presence of God not necessarily in great, sweeping events, but in the simple, raw material of every day life: a child brought to be touched, a woman drawing water from a well, a forgiving father, a repentant son. We follow more completely His commandment to love our neighbor by actually offering a gift of kindness, however small, than by dreaming great deeds, however heroic.

Like the legendary Sir Launfal, one is fortunate in the course of a lifetime to learn that the Holy Grail is not discovered in some distant place but in the small acts of kindness offered in the course of each day. Go, spread small acts of kindness and joy my friends!