It was way too hot for a soccer game.
Parents sat or stood miserably along the sidelines wondering how their young daughters could bear to run on such a day. The players came in every quarter drenched with sweat.
Only the small children, brothers and sisters of the youngsters battling on the field, seemed oblivious to the relentless beating of the sun.
How would it be to have such energy? It was almost as if those little ones were consciously trying to create their own relief from the sauna-like atmosphere by stirring up the air around themselves.
As the game wore on, I almost envied the couple who announced they must leave at halftime in order to get to another commitment. After making arrangements for their daughter to ride home with someone else, they had gathered up their other kids and turned to go.
“We'll have to hurry, or we'll be late,” I heard the father say. But the words had barely left his mouth before he paused and bent down close to the ground.
“Look at this!” he said, parting the grass to reveal a pile of broken glass. Then, forgetting about their rush to leave, he and his wife painstakingly fished out shard after shard, against the possibility that someone else's child, any of the many toddlers whose range of perpetual motion brought him down hard in that particular spot, might get cut.
It was just a little thing for the two adults to stop and pick up that glass. It probably only delayed their escape from the sweltering soccer field to their air-conditioned car five minutes. But watching them, I felt a warm spot growing deep down in my heart that had nothing to do with the temperature outside.
It reminded me of the day my baby lost his shoe in the mall, and the stranger who found it went from store to store looking for an infant wearing just one shoe. There was someone, probably as busy as anyone else, willing to spend a little time to help someone he didn't even know.
My dad is that kind of guy. As a child going camping with my parents, I knew we'd always be a little late getting up into the hills, because whenever Daddy saw someone stalled beside the road, he stopped to help them out. And after we got to the campsite, we cleaned up the area upon arrival, during our stay, and again before we left.
That was my father’s way of showing his children that quite often it’s the little things in life that count—the small acts of service done in the spirit of making the world a better place, without expecting anything besides the satisfaction of knowing you've done what needed to be done.
I guess that's why I felt such gratitude to the couple who picked up the glass. I wanted to rush right over and thank them--tell them what a neat thing they'd done and how they'd reminded me of something important that I forget from time to time.
I wanted to say it loud enough for the whole world to hear. But of course, I didn't. I thought they'd be embarrassed if I did. They hadn't expected or meant for anyone to notice what they had done.
So I didn't say anything--just went my own way resolving from then on to look more carefully each day for any shards of glass I could pick up.
