“The Woman In the Wheelchair”

Stillwater Churches established an annual tradition of promoting “Random Acts of Kindness” during the last week of September. Many small groups go into the community to perform simple acts of kindness to randomly unsuspecting individuals. Some of these acts include putting quarters in washing machines at laundry mats, making arrangement to take 5 cents off every gallon of gas at service stations , handing out water and popsicles to OSU Students fields, and other citizens on public walking trails, taking cookies to hospital , fire , ambulance, and police stations, , and presenting unusually large tips or gift cards to wait staffs at Sonics and other restaurants. The opportunities are limited only by imagination.

For example, one group took a home cooked "man sized" box lunches to city sanitation workers at 5 AM one morning. Another group cooked hamburgers and hot dogs for teachers at Lincoln Academy. My favorite was a box of groceries, clothes, and gift cards placed in a box on a doorstep of a deserving individual and then vanishing in a get a way car a/k/a “Knock and Run Benevolence”. I enjoy partnering with the organization of this event every year, but I am often bothered by the underlying connation that some may see only the irony of churches doing RACs one day out of the year The thought is slightly analogous to why Christmas motivates certain behaviors only once a year. For some "christianity" is what they believe, for others "christianity is what defines their lives. Expressed another way, its not so much what yoiu believe in but in whom do you believe

Several weeks ago one of our women in her late 50’s came into our church office struggling with her wheelchair. She has suffered from MS throughout her life. She talks with great difficulty, and it took me a little bit to understand what she was saying. The short story was that her husband had just become eligible for social security benefits which for some reason caused a modest increase in her monthly disability payments. She had “rolled” her way to church with great effort from a nearby subdivision to ask how her “extra” money could be used to help other “less fortunate” people. Talking through tears while standing behind her, I told her I would come up with options the following week. She left the building, and as I watched she fell to the ground from her wheel chair on our side walk, produced a spade and a Wal-Mart sack and began pulling herself along the sidewalk weeding our flower bed. This is how she serves the church each week along with helping us pass out bulletins on Sunday..

A passerby on the highway called our office from his car to tell us that a lady may have fallen out of her wheel chair outside our building and we may want to “check her out”. There were many Random Acts of Kindness performed in Stillwater this week, but none shall equal that which we received from “the woman in the wheelchair”.