Deliberate Divine Deeds

You notice a man sitting up against an old building. It’s winter, a cool wind whips at your rosy red cheeks. You had just walked out of a store, holding your plastic bag in one hand and the change from your $10 bill in the other. You notice the man sitting there in his winter hat, plaid jacket, and tore-up jeans. Hardly enough to keep him comfortable through the harsh winter night. He’s holding a small styro-foam cup with his cut-up hands. There’s nothing in it. You stop a few feet away from him and count the change in your hand- $5.22. You hesitate for a moment, but you walk up to him, place the $5 in the cup, and continue walking.

We’ve all heard of stories like this or have even done similar acts. Helping a co-worker pick up her pile of papers she just dropped, giving a friend a compliment for their hard work on the baseball field. We’ve even thought of a phrase to describe such actions- “Random acts of kindness”. In a world that’s infected with bad attitudes, poor moral decision making, and other debilitating acts, it’s nice when people stop to take the time and commit a random act of kindness. But is that enough?

I recently finished reading the book Hurt-Healer: Reaching out to a Broken World by Tony Nolan. It’s a great book and I’d highly recommend it. One of the chapters talked about these “Random acts of Kindness”. Mr. Nolan gives an example, similar to the one I provided, of a random act of kindness. It tells the story of a man who gives a homeless man a cheeseburger and continues on with his day. Nolan then asks us to consider what happens next in the homeless man’s life. The man gratefully eats the only food he’s had in 24 hours, falls asleep, and doesn’t wake up the next morning. Though the burger helped pro-long his life for a few more hours, he had finally died of starvation. What Nolan says next is shocking. He presents the idea that the homeless man was a former murderer who sought no forgiveness for any of the things he had done. The man who gave him a chesseburger thought he was committing a random act of kindness, yet he didn’t realize he had just sent the man to Hell on a full-stomach.

Now certainly it’s not the man’s fault that the homeless man went to Hell and of course it was a great thing for him to do to give him a cheeseburger. But what more could he have done? What would be so bad about offering to give the man a ride to the homeless shelter a couple blocks away? Better yet, offer to house him for the night and provide him a nice home-cooked meal. Seems extreme, doesn’t it? That’s because such actions aren’t being done often enough. People are afraid that the homeless man will steal from them, will harm them, will never want to leave. I won’t lie, I’d probably feel the same way if I was put into that situation at this point in my life. But there is an outcome that is more involved than a random act of kindness. Tony Nolan nicknames it “Deliberate divine deeds”.

Deliberate divine deeds are deeds that have a deeper meaning behind them. Here is a true story of such a deed. A youth group from a church filled up a van with a lawn-chair, a cooler filled with drinks, an umbrella, and a ton of money that they had recently fundraised. Their goal was to go onto the interstate and pull over for the first person who they noticed had blown a tire and needed assistance. It didn’t take long before they saw a man on the side of the road with a blown tire and fumes coming out of the hood of the car. The crew started talking to the old man and found out he had been stranded there for an hour waiting for someone to help. One of the youth grabbed the chair for the man to sit on and another grabbed the umbrella to provide some shade from the blistering hot sun. They offered him a cold drink from the cooler and asked if he wanted anything from the local fast-food restaurant. The old man was shy, but gave-in and requested a little bit of food. As the car pulled away to get food, some of the group stayed behind to keep the man company. Meanwhile, a repair vehicle had been called and was on its way. It soon pulled up and began working on all of the repairs that needed to be done to the worn-down car. The teens used the fundraised money to cover all of the costs. Soon after, the youth group van returned and provided the old man with a free lunch. When lunch was over, the old man was ready to drive away. The youth group politely handed the man a business card of their church and proceeded to tell him that Jesus loved the man and had helped him out today. If he wanted to ever come visit their church, he was more than welcome to. The crew drove off to their next person and the old man drove away feeling full-both in his stomach and in his heart.

What these teens did was a deliberate divine deed. They didn’t simply give the old man money or food- they took the time and effort to make sure his physical needs, his car’s needs, and his spiritual needs were taken care of. Providing just money or just food would have been a random act of kindness. It would have been helpful and had good intentions behind it, but it would not have been enough. We are called to go above and beyond. If society would continue random acts of kindness and even have more and more people involved, that would be great. But ultimately, more frequent deliberate divine deeds is what we should all be striving for. These deeds may seem complicated and unnecessary; but if you start out by caring about others and helping when you can, you will soon realize how good it feels to help others. You will want to keep going. Pretty soon, you’ll be ready for a challenge. It is at that point that you will graduate from random acts of kindness to random acts of kindness and deliberate divine deeds. You will not only change the lives of others, you will find that it will change your life as well.

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