GOOD NEWS
There is a lot of bad news about COVID-19. There are also good news stories of how people are using this time for something good. Here are a few of those!
Cavanaugh Bell is a first-grader in Maryland. He heard about the coronavirus, and he started thinking about what he could do. He had $600 in savings, so he asked his mom to go shopping with him. At the store, he bought cartloads of hand sanitizer, snacks, cleaning supplies, and toilet paper, and made 65 care packages, then delivered them to his grandmother’s senior living community.
Taran Tien, 9, and his sister Calliope, 6, went to their 78-year-old neighbor’s house who was quarantined in Ohio. They dressed up in formal attire, took their cellos, and gave a 30-minute classical music concert. The lady wanted her grandchildren, who live in Israel, to hear it, so she FaceTimed the concert.
Brian and Michael Morin took out a $50,000 line of credit to pay their employees at Federico’s Pizza in New Jersey. People heard about this and sent money to the Morin brothers. Rather than paying off the line of credit, they used the money to buy meals for people working at hospitals and health facilities.
José Andrés owns eight restaurants. He is offering to-go meals for free for those in financial difficulty and only charges $7 for those who can afford to pay. José has a great philosophy, “We need to prepare for the worst, but hope for the best.”
An 88-year-old resident of Washington State has a beautifully manicured yard. He fell and broke his hip cutting the grass. Three EMTs took him to the hospital. They answered other calls, then came back to the elderly man’s house after their shift ended and finished doing his yard work. They knew that would be good medicine for the 88-year-old resident.
My good friend, Sieu Tang, has several alteration locations. Even though the need for alterations has diminished, she kept her employees and started making hundreds of masks per week for Jackson Hospital. She is 78 years old and working long hours each day because “people desperately need what I can do.”
The pandemic can bring out the best or the worst in people. It’s a great opportunity to make phone calls, give financially to an important cause, be engaged in random acts of kindness, offer to be helpful, read the Bible to people, etc. Jesus said, “I’m telling the solemn truth: Whenever you did one of these things to someone overlooked or ignored, that was Me—you did it to Me.” (Matt 25:40 MSG)
Remember Sieu’s words, “People desperately need what you can do.”
If you wait to act until all conditions are perfect, you probably never will act. Often the best opportunities to serve are seized in the toughest of times. In the midst of plagues and multiple pandemics, Moses led the children of Israel to the Promised Land!
It’s never the wrong time to do the right thing!
