It only takes one small act of kindness to radically change someone’s day. What’s better is when something that seems “small” to one person reveals itself in a BIG way.
ShelbyLynn Alexander was waiting at a stoplight this past January when she noticed a man holding a cardboard sign that read, “Need a little help. Will pay it forward.”
In a Facebook post she wrote about the experience, ShelbyLynn says she usually only gives food, rather than money. But on this particular day, she did something different.
Reaching out to him, she handed the man three bills folded up around her business card. A real estate agent, ShelbyLynn figured she might be able to help him find another place to live in the future.
“By his phrasing, ‘Need a little help,’ I wasn’t sure if he was homeless or if he was just going through a difficult time in his life,” ShelbyLynn writes. “I never caught his name, but I remembered his face. I remembered everything; the dingy clothes he had been wearing in the thirty degree weather, his dog he had wrapped in blankets instead of himself, and the shamefulness in his eyes as I offered him the money. I said a prayer for him and drove away.”
Little did she know, God heard her prayers, and He was hard at work in this man who stood begging on the side of the road.
“Tonight at work, I received a call from a man who wanted to see one of our houses and had asked for me by name.”
ShelbyLynn says she made the appointment and met the client at the address after work.
“As soon as I pulled into the driveway, my eyes were first drawn to a plump dog hanging out of the window of a truck that seemed as happy as could be. I recognized him first. Then, out of the truck, stepped the man I had given money to so many months ago. This time, though, he was wearing a collared shirt, freshly-starched jeans, boots, and had a clean-shaven face.”
ShelbyLynn admits that at first, she thought she had been scammed back in January, by a man who had dressed up in dingy clothes and pretended to need money.