Good Samaritan

Recently, a community of around 5,300 residents came together to move a local bookstore — literally one book at a time. On Sunday, nearly 300 people formed a human chain in downtown Chelsea, passing all 9,100 books from Serendipity Books’ original storefront to a new location just a block away. The effort, dubbed a “book brigade,” involved people of all ages linking up along the sidewalk, carefully handing off each book until it reached its new shelf on Main Street.

“It was a practical way to move the books, but it also was a way for everybody to have a part,” said bookstore owner Michelle Tuplin. As titles moved hand to hand, participants chatted about the books: “As people passed the books along, they said ‘I have not read this’ and ‘that’s a good one.’”

Tuplin announced the move in January, and excitement grew quickly. “It became so buzzy in town. So many people wanted to help,” she said. What might have taken much longer with a professional moving company was accomplished in under two hours by the community — with the added achievement of shelving the books alphabetically upon arrival.

Tuplin has owned Serendipity Books since 2017. She employs three part-time staff and has kept the spirit of the store grounded in community since it opened in 1997.

Chelsea, located about 60 miles west of Detroit, is known for its close-knit atmosphere. “It’s a small town and people just really look out for each other,” said Kaci Friss, a bookstore employee and lifelong resident. “Anywhere you go, you are going to run into someone you know or who knows you, and is going to ask you about your day.” Reflecting on the event, Friss added that the brigade reminded her “how special this community is.”

With care, cooperation, and a shared love for stories, Chelsea’s residents turned a routine move into a meaningful celebration of connection.

Possible Preaching Angle:

When people come together for a common cause amazing tasks can be accomplished and society takes notice. Local churches can also give a powerful visual testimony when they come together to serve the community in the name of Jesus.

As fire threatened people in Jasper National Park, Colleen Knull sprang into action. “I like to be able to help people,” said the 18-year-old. “I like the fact that what I do in my work does good.”

Knull is a volunteer firefighter in North Okanagan in Alberta, Canada. She was working a summer job as part of the kitchen staff at a Jasper lodge when one night an evacuation order was issued for the area. “The smoke was coming up from the mountainside,” said Knull. “It was big.”

Knull quickly spread the word to guests of the lodge and tracked down any other people camping out in the area. In total, she rallied 16 people together for a four-hour hike in treacherous terrain to safety.

Rebecca Tocher, a hiker who was in Knull’s group said, “There was more intense smoke, my eyes were burning, there was ash falling constantly. She was an amazing leader and was just making sure that everyone was working together.”

Knull used her knowledge of the area and tracking skills to navigate in the dark. Knull said:

I had previously ridden a horse up to that lodge on that same trail and throughout the way me and my employer, we had cut logs on the way up," said Knull. "There were 67 logs, so there would be 67 cut logs on the way down…So, I used my tracking skills – following horse tracks, and horse manure.”

“She was just on it and she led it, the whole way,” said David Richmond, another hiker in the group.

“I do it because at the end of the day, I’d want somebody there to help,” said Knull.

During the hike down, the group was able to communicate with search and rescue crews to help with the evacuation. Knull eventually drove all 16 people in her pickup truck out of the evacuation zone. No one was seriously injured.

Knull said the experience reinforced her motivation to become a full-time, professional firefighter.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Rescue; Salvation; Savior, Christ only - Christ, our compassionate Savior, personally leads us through the valley of death, just as He promised, 'Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, you are with me' (Psalm 23:4). His prior experience ensures our safe passage. 2) Evangelism, Witnessing - Christians can show others the way to safety in the Lord since they know the way (John 14:6).

In an article in Scientific American titled, "Rx for Teen Mental Health: Volunteering," Lydia Denworth writes that "helping others might help depression and anxiety." She gives three examples:

● An early experiment found that 10th graders who volunteered in an elementary school for two months showed fewer signs of harmful inflammation and lower levels of obesity compared to students who didn’t volunteer.

● A group of 14- to 20-year-olds who had been recently diagnosed with mild to moderate depression or anxiety participated in volunteer work at animal shelters, food banks, and other community organizations. They experienced a 19% reduction in depressive symptoms.

● A 2023 analysis revealed that young people who participated in community service or volunteered in the past year were more likely to be in very good or excellent health. They also tended to stay calm and in control when faced with challenges and were less likely to experience anxiety. Why? Helping others improves mood and raises self-esteem. It provides fertile ground for building social connections. It also shifts people’s focus away from negative things and can change how they see themselves.

Silinia Pha Aphay was sprinting in the preliminary Olympic rounds of the 100-meter dash event, when something unexpected happened.

Aphay, who ran for her native Laos, must have felt a sense of solidarity with the other runners in the preliminary rounds. Alongside sprinters from Turkmenistan, Niger, Paraguay, South Sudan, Palau, and Congo, Aphay was not expected to contend for a medal, but simply to enjoy the prestige of competition and serve as an inspiration to others in her nation.

So, when she crossed the finish line, and heard the crowd reacting in dismay, she immediately turned around and saw one of her competitors, Lucia Moris of South Sudan, laying on the ground in agony. Without pausing, Aphay ran back to console her fellow racer, who was shrieking in pain and holding her right leg.

“We are athletes,” Aphay said. “All 100 meters athletes have to know how being hurt feels. And this is a big competition. It’s a big dream to come here. But you get hurt here. So, everybody knows the feeling.”

Ultimately, Aphay couldn’t do much to physically assist Moris. “Just cry out,” she told Maris. But she stayed with her fallen friend until medics came and placed her on a gurney.

“I can only share her pain.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we are present with those who are suffering, we model the love of Jesus, who reached out to the afflicted and downcast.

Keisha House is a nurse practitioner and assistant director of the Substance Use Disorder Center of Excellence at Rush University Medical Center. House spent an afternoon training a bunch of aspiring professionals in the skills of preventing death from opioid overdose. These included recognizing signs of substance abuse and administering doses of Naloxone, the generic name for Narcan, an agent that can reverse the effects of an overdose.

These would be absolutely essential skills for any healthcare professional to learn, but House’s clients that day were not nurses or doctors. Rather, they were a group of barbers.

“You all are our eyes and ears, in the barbershop,” House told her audience at Larry’s Barber College in the Washington Park neighborhood of Chicago. House stressed to them that their relationship with local clientele made them invaluable partners in the ongoing quest to reduce and eventually eliminate drug overdoses within the black community.

House stressed the importance of learning the visual signs of overdose, because they’re not always consistent with the ways that such overdoses are portrayed in media. Symptoms can include unresponsiveness, constricted pupils, a limp body, and breathing that slows or stops. In 2018, studies showed that opioid overdoses happened all over the city, but the most deaths were clustered in the mostly black and brown neighborhoods.

Health improvement advocates say that Rush’s outreach to barbershops and beauty shops was influenced by a 2017 Illinois law requiring hair stylists, barbers, and cosmetologists to receive domestic violence and sexual assault awareness training. “In the beauty shop, barber shop, it’s a safe haven,” House said. “If we increase the knowledge, the training, the awareness … we’re able to promote positive health behaviors among their customers, where they feel safe.”

Laniah Davis was one of the barber students given free Narcan kits after the day’s presentation, and she’s feeling confident.

David said, “Now that we know this information, we’re able to save a life or two. If it was somebody in my family, I would want someone to help them. So, whether I know them or not … I would see myself jumping into action to do whatever it takes.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Just as these barbers were given authority to administer life-saving medicine, so are we authorized to act swiftly and boldly to rescue our neighbors from danger and to show God’s love in real-life situations.

Mariska Hargitay has been playing the same fictional cop role for over 500 episodes of television, spanning over 25 years. Hargitay plays detective Olivia Benson on NBC’s Law & Order: Special Victims Unit. She’s been doing it so long she can practically do it in her sleep.

So, it came to no one’s surprise last April when a little girl spied Hargitay, filming an episode wearing a realistic looking police badge, and mistook her for an actual law enforcement officer. Given her public persona, it was not surprising that Hargitay halted filming on the episode to make sure the little girl got the help that she needed.

The girl had become separated from her mother in a playground in New York City and witnesses say Hargitay took 20 minutes to find her mother and console them both upon their reunion. When asked about it, Hargitay insisted it didn’t take a whole lot of convincing. She said:

There’s a thing: WWOBD, “What would Olivia Benson do?” The fans would always talk about it, and one day it hit me. I have those moments where I’ve sort of slipped into her. If there’s a crisis, I just take over and lead like that. Being strong and fearless.

Hargitay has good reason to feel secure in her role; a month prior, the show was renewed for a record-setting 26th season, besting the previous record for the longest-running primetime live-action series in American television history.

Possible Preaching Angle:

We become what we practice; when we practice deeds of righteousness, we become more likely to live as righteous people. Being a disciple of Jesus is not just about knowing rightly but doing rightly.

In 1939, Lloyd Dong and his family were having difficulty finding a place to live. The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1884 and the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924 were part of a series of racially exclusive laws and ordinances designed to prevent Chinese immigrants like the Dongs from being able to successfully settle down. But the Dongs did eventually find a place, thanks to Emma and Gus Thompson, two Black entrepreneurs who first rented and then eventually sold a house in Coronado, California to the family.

That act of kindness helped the Dongs become a part of American society. Now, generations later, the Dongs want to honor the Thompsons by donating $5 million of the proceeds of the sale of that property to a scholarship fund for Black students. Lloyd Dong, Jr. said, “Without them, we would not have the education and everything else.”

Ron and his wife Janice are both retired educators who understand the value of education, which is why they’re also working to have the Black Resource Center at San Diego State University named after the Thompsons. Janice said, “It may enable some kids to go and flourish in college that might not have been able to otherwise.”

The Thompsons initial gesture of hospitality seems even more miraculous when you consider the context. Emma and Gus Thompson originally traveled to Coronado from Kentucky to work at a local hotel, and built their house in 1895, before many of the restrictive racial housing covenants were enacted. The Thompson’s property in Coronado originally featured a residence and a small boarding house on the upper floor of a barn, intentionally created to house vulnerable people with no other place to go.

Jo Von McCalester, a professor at Howard University, said, “It was just something understood that marginalized people in San Diego had to rely very heavily on one another. One family’s sacrifice can shape the lives of so many.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

When we pass on the generosity that we’ve received from others, we model the generous love of God who lavishes on all without regard for status, heritage, or bloodline.

During Braylon Edwards’ career playing receiver in college and the NFL, he lived with a heightened sense of spatial awareness and kinetic readiness. You can’t spend years running routes at full speed, maintaining readiness to catch a football in midair while equally skilled and muscular men are ready to assault you with their bodies, and not develop the ability to react in real-time.

But on one Friday morning, Edwards’ skills weren’t just useful for avoiding harm, but also for preventing it from happening to others. When he entered a local YMCA, Edwards witnessed a 20-year-old young man assaulting an elderly gentleman around sixty years his senior.

Edwards said, “I walked into the locker after working out, I heard a noise about four rows behind me.” The dispute, according to Edwards, appeared to be over the playing of music, and he wasn’t initially concerned. But then things escalated, and that’s when he stepped in. “You start to hear some pushing and shoving, and you know what fighting sounds like … once I heard a ‘thud,’ that’s what got me up.”

Edwards quickly subdued the young man and held him securely until authorities arrived on the scene. The victim, unidentified in official accounts, was admitted to a local hospital and reported to be in stable condition.

When confronted with the possibility that this man might have died if he hadn’t intervened, Edwards revealed that the love for his own family propelled him to protect someone else in their later years. “At the end of that day, that’s just what you do … my mom, my grandma, my father … in that moment, these are the people you think about.”

Police Chief Jeff King said in a statement, “As evidenced by the significant injuries inflicted on the victim, it is clear that Mr. Braylon Edwards’ intervention played a pivotal role in saving the victim’s life. This is a horrific incident, but the selfless efforts made by Mr. Edwards embody the best in our society.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

God is glorified when we use our gifts to show love to others in need, especially the weak, the vulnerable, the poor, or the sick—these are the people whom Jesus regularly sought out for rescue and deliverance.

A young woman named Trieste Belmont was struggling with depression. Her grandmother had just passed, and she was going through a dramatic break-up. She was teaching a dance class at this time, but without a driver’s license, she relied on a friend to drive her to and from work every week. One day however the friend didn’t show, and Belmont waited for hours before being forced to walk home.

The route she used went over a high bridge. And when she got there, she stopped for a moment. She said:

I was just having one of the worst days of my life. And I was looking down at all the cars, just feeling so useless and like such a burden to everyone in my life that I decided that this was the time and I needed to end my life. I was sobbing and crying and working up the courage to just go through with it, because I knew at that moment that it was going to make everyone’s lives better.

At that moment, a driver, whose face Belmont didn’t see, and whose hand she would never shake, passed over the bridge and hollered out of the window. “Don’t jump,” they said.

It immediately clicked a lightbulb went on in her head; that if a stranger could care enough to speak up, then suicide was not the answer. She enrolled in therapy, and with the help of her friends, family, and therapist, she is far down the road indeed from that dark and fateful day.

Belmont uses the incident as an example to teach others to be kind to people, as it’s never obvious what they’re going through. The smallest kindness is multiplied by the distance, socially, between two strangers.

A woman in Sunderland, England nearly leapt to her death from in 2018 from Wearmouth Bridge, very well known as a place where people come to end their lives. She now returns to that site regularly to post messages encouraging others who are having a rough time to get help.

Paige Hunter, now 21, says that when she was a teenager suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, she found herself standing at the edge of the bridge, thinking about ending it all. That’s when a pair of Good Samaritans approached Hunter, telling her “You are worth so much more than this.”

That not only stopped her from jumping, but changed her life. The next day, Hunter wrote those eight words that were told to her on several pieces of paper and posted them all over the bridge where she had her epiphany. That’s where her campaign, Notes of Hope, began.

Since then, Hunter said she’s left over 1,000 laminated, handwritten messages on the Wearmouth Bridge encouraging others struggling with mental health issues to seek help. She’s received lots of feedback and thinks she’s saved dozens of lives through her efforts—and even improved her own. Hunter said, “It’s definitely therapeutic for me to write these messages.”

25-year-old Callum Doggrell said his life was saved by Hunter’s efforts. “I was going through a really rough patch, and I was at a point in my life where I didn’t want to be here anymore,” he said. That was in early 2019. He thought about his one-year-old son and other loved ones and decided to push past his trouble and carry on. He and Hunter are now in contact.

The biggest concern for Dr. Steve Lome before starting the Monterey Bay Half Marathon along the California coast was being able to keep up with his teenage kids beside him. But the cardiologist would soon face a life-or-death situation around mile three of the 13.1 mile race.

Lome said, "Somebody right in front of me collapsed. I saw him go down and it was pretty clear to me that it was not just somebody who tripped and fell or somebody who fainted. It was a very sudden collapse."

The man on the ground was 67-year-old Gregory Gonzales, a Washington state Superior Court judge. Gonzales said he felt fine even in the moments right before. He'd trained for the race and was so at ease that day, his only worry was nabbing a good parking spot. Gonzales said, "I thought to myself, 'Oh my gosh, it's downhill for a little bit, great!' That's all I remember."

Lome says Gonzales hit his head on the pavement when he fell. Lome rushed over and started CPR with the help of a few passersby. Lome said, “The biggest concern is that, having no blood flow to the brain, you can get some permanent brain injury. That's what we want to avoid at all costs.” He estimates they were doing chest compressions for maybe six minutes when Gonzales was defibrillated and taken by ambulance to the hospital.

Once the ambulance left, Lome was a little rattled but decided to continue the race. He had lost about 15 minutes and could make some of it back, even if his kids were farther ahead by now. He got on his cellphone, alternating between running and walking, just to make sure the hospital where Gonzales was headed knew what had taken place at the scene. He says that can make a difference to a patient's care. He eventually made it past the finish line and threw his hands up in the air to celebrate the accomplishment.

Lome and Gonzales are keeping in touch and plan to race together at the same half-marathon next year. Gonzales said, “There's not a day that goes by that I don't have tears of joy. Absolute joy. I'm here with a second chance at this life.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

As believers running the race of life, we are surrounded by people experiencing spiritual life-threatening issues. Do we care enough to stop what we are doing and offer life-giving help from the scriptures to them?

Editor’s Note: In the full-length version of this event, Dr. Lome actually saved two runners who suffered cardiac events. The other happened at the end of the race after Dr. Lome had crossed the finish line.

Traveling from Niagara Falls to Washington D.C., a tour group of 10 South Koreans got stuck driving in a blizzard near Buffalo. Two of the group went to a local house to ask for a shovel to dislodge their vehicle.

It was Christmas Eve when Alex Campagna heard their frantic knocking on his door. Outside was “the worst blizzard I’ve experienced - it was the Darth Vader of storms.” Knowing the folly of trying to carry on, he invited them all inside, putting them up on couches, air mattresses, and sleeping bags.

Eager to repay his kindness, the guests cooked several South Korean meals like stir-fried pork, and dakdori tang, a spicy chicken stew. As it turns out Campagna and his wife really like Korean food and actually happened to have some of the more extravagant ingredients on hand.

The Times reports they waited out the blizzard and stayed Friday and Saturday. They swapped stories, and even enjoyed some American football matches on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day drivers came to pick up the tour group and took them to New York for some impromptu flights.

“We have enjoyed this so much,” said Choi Yoseob, a member of the group who described the experience as unforgettable and a “unique blessing.”

Mike Huddleston was traveling for a training. He had flown from Maryland to San Francisco and needed to get to a rental car agency. But because of a degenerative neuromuscular condition that weakens his muscles, he wouldn't be able to climb the stairs of the shuttle bus. Instead, the car agency sent someone to pick him up.

But as he was walking outside to meet them, he fell. And due to his condition, he couldn't get up. "I remember sitting there in the middle of the sidewalk in front of San Francisco Airport, thinking, 'What in the world am I going to do?'"

"[Then] out of nowhere I heard, 'What can I do to help?'" Huddleston turned his head to see a man in his late thirties standing behind him. "I said, 'Are you kidding?' He said, 'No. What can I do to help you, man?'"

Huddleston described what the man could do to help him get off the ground. Once he got him up, the man fetched Huddleston's baggage, which had rolled a few feet away when he fell. "He asked me if I was good and I said, 'I am because of you. So, thank you very much.' He just said, 'No problem,' and turned and walked away."

This encounter struck Huddleston. Not just because of the man's kindness, but also because of the way he offered that kindness. His unsung hero didn't step in and start helping when he saw Huddleston on the ground. He took a moment to ask Huddleston how he could help.

Different people who need assistance may need it in different ways. So, asking them how you can help them is amazingly helpful. It allows the individual who's in need of assistance to maintain a sense of self, to maybe feel a little less helpless, and maybe even a little less vulnerable.

It's been more than 20 years since Huddleston was helped up, but he continues to think about it to this day. "His willingness to help me — and the compassion he showed in a very challenging situation — for me is something I will never forget."

Editor’s Note: This story is part of the “My Unsung Hero” series on NPR, from the Hidden Brain team, about people whose kindness left a lasting impression on someone else.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This story sheds new light on the question that Jesus often asked, “What do you want me to do for you?” (Matt. 20:32; Mark 10:51; Luke 18:41). On reading the accounts, it might seem obvious what the person needed, but now we have better insight into why Jesus would ask this question. It is not only to allow the person to express faith, but to give them a “sense of self.”

Author Nijay Gupta recounts the 1965-1966 story of a group of six boys who ran away from their homeland of Tonga.

The young boys stole a boat and headed out hastily in search of Fiji (some five hundred miles away). They took a sack of food and a small gas burner stove, but no map or compass. Due to their amateur sailing skills and the unfriendly seas, they were lost, adrift for eight days, until they finally spotted land. They ended up on the deserted island of Ata. These Tongan boys were stranded there for fifteen months.

Their rescue finally came through Australian Captain Peter Warner, who happened upon them as during a return sail from the capital of Tonga. Casually focusing his binoculars at a nearby Ata Island, which was thought to be uninhabited, he noticed a burned patch of ground. He said during a later interview, “I thought, that’s strange that a fire should start in the tropics on an uninhabited island. So, we decided to investigate further.”

As they approached, they saw a teenage boy rushing into the water toward them; five more quickly followed. When the boy reached the boat, he told Mr. Warner that he and his friends had been stranded for more than a year, living off the land and trying to signal for help from passing ships.

Most stories of dramatic rescues tend to stop there, and the reader is left wondering, “What happened to these boys? Were they okay? Did they live happy, and fulfilled lives? Did they stay friends?”

The rest of the story is that immediately after Wallace delivered them back home, they were arrested for stealing the boat they had “borrowed.” Warner took pity on them and paid the boat owner $200 to get the kids off the hook. Furthermore, Warner decided to quit his job in Sydney and stay in Tonga long-term. He started a fishing business there and hired the shipwrecked boys as his crew. Warmer mentored and stayed friends with some of them for the rest of his life. One of the boys said, after several decades of friendship, “He [Warner] was like a father to me.”

Gupta adds, “This captures poignantly the difference between a plastic, ‘get-out-of-hell-free’ type of salvation message of Christianity, and a deeper, more relational, dynamic vision of ‘rescue’ that is characteristic of the New Testament.”

Editor’s Note: Captain Peter Warner passed away in April of 2012 at the age of 90.

When amateur drone pilot Josh Logue launched a routine flight, he expected to find unusually high stream waters from an unexpectedly heavy rainfall. What he found, however, surprised and alarmed him. The image on the controller screen showed what he thought was a large shadow on the road.

Josh said, “I zoomed in on it. Oh, it’s a car and a giant hole down here!” Immediately, he recruited his dad and a neighbor, a firefighter with the Denver Fire Department, to try to help. Once there, they found a Jeep Grand Cherokee SUV, upside-down in a large sinkhole, with rapidly rising waters rushing around it. And to their further surprise, they found two people inside, who’d been there for fifteen minutes. If the water rose another six inches, the vehicle would be completely submerged. After dialing 911 for help, they got to work.

Ryan Nuanes was the neighbor who accompanied Josh and his dad. He began communicating with the couple trapped inside, trying to ascertain how much air was still in the vehicle. Meanwhile Josh’s dad left to find chains for his pickup truck, which they would eventually use to help pull the Jeep on its side so that first responders could rescue its occupants. Ryan said “I’ve been a Denver firefighter for 25 years. And it was the most dire situation that I had seen.”

Within ten minutes, responders from the local fire, sheriff, and state patrol were on the scene, and they all collaborated with the rescue effort. Once rescued, the man and woman inside the Jeep were transported to the hospital for further treatment.

Josh still has ambitions of becoming a professional drone pilot. Before this incident, he wasn’t sure how to make such a transition. But now he certainly has something valuable to point towards. He said, “It’ll be a story that I’ll tell.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

Each of us has the capacity to act as a “Good Samaritan” to others. God uses those who make themselves available for service at critical moments of need.

A 71-year-old Swedish man was in his driveway shoveling snow in the Swedish city of Trollhättan, when he suffered a sudden cardiac arrest. Normally, you have about ten minutes to get help in such a situation and ambulance response times are often too long to save the life of the patient. Typically, only ten percent of people survive sudden cardiac arrest.

Luckily, a telephone call was immediately placed requesting emergency services and the man lived in a region that had partnered with Everdrone’s innovative life-saving program. Everdrones deliver an automated external defibrillator (AED) to the scene. The amount of time from the alarm until the AED was safely delivered at the doorstep of the incident address was just over three minutes.

Even more fortuitous, a doctor happened to be driving by and stopped to see if he could help. Dr. Mustafa Ali said, “I was on my way to work at the local hospital when I looked out the car window and saw a man collapsed in his driveway and I immediately rushed to help. The man had no pulse, so I started doing CPR while asking another bystander to call the Swedish emergency number. Just minutes later, I saw something flying above my head. It was a drone with a defibrillator!”

After the initial treatment on site, the ambulance arrived, the patient was rushed to the hospital. “This is a truly revolutionary technology that needs to be implemented all over,” said the patient who now has made a full recovery and returned home. “If it wasn’t for the drone I probably wouldn’t be here.”

The company behind the drone pilot project says it’s the first time in medical history that a drone has played a crucial part in saving a life during a cardiac arrest. The drone carries an ultralight defibrillator, which can be used by any bystander.

Possible Preaching Angles:

1) Good Samaritan; Social Action – We should always be ready to speed help to others in time of need; 2) Action; Help from God; Prayer, answered – When God decides to take action, he moves faster than we can imagine, help is immediate (Isa. 65:24).

The manager of a Minnesota store was surprised to come back from lunch to find his counterhelp walking around in her socks. That’s because security camera footage revealed she had just given her favorite shoes, a pair of purple retro Jordans, to a homeless man she saw strapping boxes to his feet. Employee Ta Leia Thomas, known locally as “Ace” said the split-second act of kindness “was an easy decision.”

Thomas said, “He said nobody would ever give me shoes like that. and I said, ‘Well, I’m not everybody. I was always taught to help others. You never know what their problem is, or what they are going through.’”

Manager Tom Agnes said that even before the generous act, he wished he had 12 Aces on his team, such is her work ethic and joyful connection with customers. Agnes bought her a fresh pair of kicks before her shift was over, after which he shared the security camera footage on social media.

Thomas has been overwhelmed by the comments of love and appreciation, which quickly grew all the more intense after Agnes and a few friends in the industry came together to raise $450 for Thomas to buy another pair of purple Jordans.

Now after becoming a little bit more attentive to Ace’s life, Agnes learned that she is the sole caretaker of her mother, who sleeps in Ace’s bed while Ace sleeps on the floor. In the end he just gave her the cash rather than the shoes to buy a second bed.

You can watch the act of kindness here.

As a child, Juliet Liu Waite and her sisters would plead with their aunt to tell them the story of their escape from Saigon, South Vietnam. The story begins in the family home on the night of April 30, 1975. The family had just finished dinner when a loud explosion blew out the windows at the back of the house. The Fall of Saigon and the end of the 20-year-long war in Vietnam had begun.

Juliet’s grandmother had worked for 20 years as a translator for the US Department of Defense. Her American boss had assured her, “Don’t worry. We won’t leave without you. We’ll make sure you are taken care of.” But she had not heard from him in days. She did not know that he had already left the country, leaving her and her family behind without even a telephone call.

Juliet writes:

Now, with her family sprawled across the floor, their ears ringing from the blast, my grandmother decided: “It’s time to go.” Each packed a small bag of essential items. Outside the house, bombs were exploding, taking down shops, houses, and people. They ducked low, making their way from ditch to ditch, crawling toward the airport. It took them all night.

At dawn the family arrived at the airport security gates. Her grandmother showed her papers to the guards, telling them her boss’ name, saying that he had promised to get them out. The guard shook his head. “I’m sorry. Your name isn’t on this list.” The grandmother begged, “Please! I worked for the Americans. They will kill us all.” Her grandmother grabbed the gold jewelry and small items of value she had taken from the house. “Please,” she said. “Take all of this.” The guard took all of it, then let them through the gate.

Juliet writes,

My grandparents and uncles urged the girls to get on the first available chopper. “No!” my aunties and my mother cried. “We cannot separate!” But my grandfather insisted. “You cannot wait! We will be right behind you!” They finally agreed. In the chaos, my grandparents did not see which chopper they boarded, though they were pretty sure it was the one they were watching. Suddenly, the helicopter exploded as a missile tore through it. My grandparents looked on in horror, believing that they had just lost the four young women.

It would be another two weeks before they discovered they had been mistaken; the girls had boarded a different helicopter. The family waited for the following helicopters to bring their parents, but as they waited, no familiar faces appeared. Turning to strangers, they asked, “Please! We cannot find our parents!” People shook their heads. Some murmured that not all of the helicopters had made it. My mother and her sisters wept.

They boarded a ship that carried the women to Guam where one of my aunties stumbled across my grandfather. It was a miracle they found each other amid the chaotic crowds. When the whole family was reunited, they were overwhelmed at the mystery of this blessing. Eventually the family began to prosper. How had had the family’s story ended so well?

Far away, at a small Baptist church in Lafayette, Indiana, some Christians were convinced that God’s heart was for those nobody wanted. Together, they committed to sponsoring a refugee family. They raised money, found housing, and provided clothing and furniture to a strange family from a foreign land.

My mother’s family knew nothing about Jesus or the church when they lived in Vietnam. But they encountered a generosity they had never witnessed. “It wasn’t just the money and the things they provided,” my mother would say. “We saw in these people a kindness we had never seen before.”

This is also my story. I grew up knowing that I existed because a group of people believed that a merciful God was asking them to show mercy to those who needed it. I grew up knowing that this was a God worth trusting.

Editor’s Note: Juliet Liu Waite is now a co-pastor at Life on the Vine, a church in the Chicago suburbs.

Cicely Saunders, a British nurse and social worker, later trained to be a doctor. And what she discovered, in 1950s England, is that hospitals had no idea what to do with patients who were dying. Doctors would tell the family, "There is nothing more that can be done.” And nothing more was done for this suffering person.

Cicely Saunders, who had become a Christian, refused to accept that. She spent seven years researching pain control and working among the dying. She began dreaming of a place serving cancer patients, but was afraid of stepping out and asking for financing for what would be the world’s first purpose-built hospice. Then one day she read Psalm 37:5 "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass."

So in 1961, Cicely Saunders opened St. Christopher’s in London. It was there where they did pioneering research on using morphine for pain control. And unlike hospitals, in her hospice, a patient can garden, or get their hair done, or enjoy art therapy, music therapy, drama therapy. Cicely believed, “You matter because you are you, you matter to the last moment of your life."

Her work helped create a new specialty in medicine, called palliative care. And when euthanasia began growing in Europe, Cicely Saunders strongly opposed it, because of her Christian faith, and because she had shown that effective pain control is possible.

In 2005, Cicely Saunders died from breast cancer--at the very hospice she had started. In a culture that viewed a dying patient as a medical failure, Cicely Saunders taught the world how to view that same patient as a whole person.

Sarah Pulley knows what moms are going through when their babies are in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at Riley Children’s Hospital. She knows because she’s been there herself. Sarah said, “When Amelia contracted a virus, she was transferred to Riley Children’s Health. We’re very familiar with those walls.”

As a way of giving back, she began volunteering at the hospital, and was excited when she heard that one of the charities was interested in providing pampering opportunities for moms with babies in the NICU. Since she runs her own hair salon, she was able to donate one of her salon chairs and use her contacts to arrange for the donation of hair products worth hundreds of dollars.

Now, using her hair styling skills, she offers free hair and scalp treatments to moms at the “Beauty Bar” of the Ronald McDonald Family Room Maternity Tower at the hospital. She said, “We shampoo, blow dry and give scalp massages on the second Wednesday of each month. You completely lose all sense of yourself when you have a baby in the NICU. My first mom completely relaxed in the chair; she just closed her eyes and breathed. My second was completely exhausted.”

Pulley wants the moms who sit in her chair to receive an infusion of joy and hope. “I want them to know, ‘you got this.’ There is hope in my story because my daughter is thriving. We made it.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

We demonstrate the love of Jesus when we care for strangers who are in distress.