By Joe Mazzella
It was over 30 years ago. I was a young Dad with a wife and three kids at home. I was working at a local sawmill just trying to make ends meet. We had been working most of the day when suddenly the main machine broke down. The foreman told us to go home and that it may take several weeks to fix the machine. That meant going back on unemployment again and hoping to stretch the little it paid to meet our bills and feed our family.
I got in my friend’s car. Even though he lived on the far end of the county he had gone out of his way to pick me up and give me a ride to work that day so my wife could use our old clunker of a car to go shopping. He drove me to my house and looked down at his gas gauge. “I’m not sure if I got enough gas to get home,” he said. I knew he didn’t have any money because he was in just as bad financial shape as I was. I pulled out my own wallet and looked inside it. There was just one moldy $5 bill left in it but I took it out and handed it to my friend. He thanked me with a smile and drove off. I stood there for a minute. Even though I was worn out from work, I still felt light, at peace, and happier than I had been in a while. Even though I was flat broke now, I somehow felt rich inside. I felt more like myself, more like who God wanted me to be. I looked up to the skies with a smile then went inside.
I still remember that moment all of these years later. My family and I went through many more hard times as the years went by and I am sure we will have hard times to come as well. But I’ve never once regretted a single act of kindness I did or a single moment of love I shared.
God put us here to help each other, to care for each other and to make this world a better place. God put us here to Love each other because God is Love and so are we. Sometimes you have to give away your last 5 dollars to remember this, but it is worth it.
