Encourage A Stranger

Maybe the most overlooked opportunities to reflect a bit of God’s light into someone’s life are with people we don’t know personally.  Think of who they are: the grocery store checkout person, the clerk in the department store, the person whom we stop to ask directions (or who stops us), the person we sit next to at a sporting event, concert, or PTA meeting, the appliance repairman who comes to your home, the mailman, delivery man, or garbage collector…and the list goes on….

Hollywood gives us a great example of this in the romantic comedy You’ve Got Mail.  I love the scene when the Tom Hanks character calms a tense situation between the Meg Ryan character and a supermarket check out woman.  By seeing the woman’s name on her nametag and using it (“Hi, Rose!  That is a great name. Rose.”), injecting a bit of humor, wearing a smile, and wishing her a happy holiday, Hanks’s character wins her over and defuses the tension.  All it cost him was a bit of creativity, a positive perspective, a kind word, and a warm and encouraging demeanor.

The cheapest deposit we will ever make is a simple word or act of encouragement in a stranger’s emotional bank account.  And it may be far more significant than we realize.

David Jeremiah, Signs of Life, p. 147