Community Stores Refuse Kind Acts of Service
The story is told of a minister who was organizing opportunities for people in his church to do small acts of kindness as a demonstration of Christ’s love in the community.
1. He phoned several neighborhood grocery stores and Laundromats and asked for permission to serve their customers.
2. As he talked with a grocery store employee, the person hesitated and said, “I’ll need to ask the manager, but first, let me make sure I understand what you want to do: You want to clean up the parking lot, retrieve shopping carts, hold umbrellas for customers, and you don’t want anything in return?”
3. “Yes, that’s right,” the minister replied.
4. After a long wait on hold, the employee returned to the phone and said, “I’m sorry, we can’t let you serve our customers, because if we let you do it, then we’d have to let everyone else do it.”
(Ann Jeffries, Kansas City, Kansas, “Lite Fare,” Christian Reader; www.PreachingToday.com)
From a sermon by David Owens, Serve One Another, 11/9/2009