A Mom took her children to a crowded restaurant one day. Her six-year-old son asked if he could say the grace. He prayed: “God is great and God is good, let us thank God for the food, and God I would thank you even more if Mom gets us ice cream for dessert. Amen.”
Along with the laughter from the other diners sitting nearby, the woman at the very next table growled loudly: “That’s what’s wrong with this country. Kids today don’t even know how to pray. The very idea… asking God for ice cream! Why I never….”
Hearing this, the little six-year-old boy burst into tears and he asked his mother: “Did I do it wrong? I’m sorry. Is God mad at me?” The little boy’s mother pulled him over into her lap. She hugged him tightly and assured him that he had done a terrific job with his prayer and God was certainly not mad at him.
Just then an elderly gentleman walked over to the table. He winked at the little boy and he said: “I know God really well. We visit every day and I happen to know that God loved your prayer. It may have been the best one God has heard all day.” “Really?” the little boy asked.. “Cross my heart,” said the man.
Then he leaned over and whispered into the little boy’s ear. Pointing at the woman at the next table who had made the remark that started the whole thing, he said: “Too bad she never asks God for ice cream. A little ice cream is good for the soul sometimes.”
Naturally, the Mom ordered ice cream for her kids at the end of the meal. The little six-year-old boy stared at his for a moment and then he did something that no one in that restaurant that day will ever forget. He picked up his sundae and without a word walked over and placed it in front of the woman at the next table.
With a big smile he said to her: “Here, this is for you. Ice cream is good for the soul sometimes and my soul is good already!’ The people in the restaurant applauded and somewhere in heaven Jesus was smiling… because that little boy had already learned how to look at others with the eyes of sacrificial love. Sight (true sight) is always a matter of the heart… not the eyes.
The little boy was teaching you and me a lesson that day we so sorely need after such a tumultuous election week and during the terrible, ongoing pandemic.
Think of a time when YOU have done something like the little boy did in the restaurant.
DEAR GOD, THERE ARE PEOPLE EVERY DAY WHO PRAY FOR ALL THE THINGS I TAKE FOR GRANTED.
