Heart Hope by Olga

Do you ever stop to think about how your actions affect the people around you? When you perform a random act of kindness it can have a positive effect on the people that you encounter daily. It can be as simple as letting the frazzled mom at the grocery store check out in front of you or paying for the person's coffee behind you at Starbucks. Any way that you can treat another person with kindness can help to show them the love of Christ. But have you ever stopped to think about the flip side of that behavior? How does a negative action affect others? You would probably agree that churches should be the best breeding ground for the ideal behavior, but let me share a couple of examples that show that we might need a little bit of help. One of the young girls at our church confessed that she had accidentally pulled out in front of a car because the parking lot where she works is difficult to see oncoming traffic. As she glanced at the oncoming car she saw the middl...

I have always laughingly said, “You better behave where ever you go because you never know who you will run into.” This was truth demonstrated a couple of weeks ago when I was on a trip. The weather was “iffy” because they were predicting a winter storm for the early morning hours, so my husband and I decided to drive down the night before and stay in a hotel in order to avoid any early morning predicaments.    It was around 11:00PM when we arrived at the hotel. I was beat from a long day of work, rushing home to pack and the 2+ hour drive in the rain snow slush. Standing in the lobby waiting to check-in I looked up to see a young couple from our church that had the same idea that we had. They were flying to California in just a few hours for some rest, relaxation and warm weather and wanted to make sure they make their flight.  The next morning after a good night’s sleep we were settled on the plane when I looked up and saw that a co-worker was boarding the plane. W...

Why do we reward bad behavior by making heroes out of people who have done something wrong? I was just listening to the commentary on Steven Slater, the JetBlue flight attendant who cursed at passengers, pulled the emergency exit chute, grabbed a couple of beers and then slid off running to his car, putting many at risk with his poor behavior. In the past few days he has gotten thousands of fans on his Facebook page and has even raised money to help with his defense. He is being called a “folk hero.” There is something very erroneous with this behavior. As one who served the public for many years in a classroom, there were many days when I too could have jumped and run—notice I said could have, but there was a choice to be made. You can imagine that there were “abusive” students in the inner-city school where I worked who may have been much ruder in their behavior than the passengers on an airplane, but the thought never crossed my mind to abandon them. They needed me to be the exampl...