Weeks ago as my kids and I drove up to the drive thru, I couldn’t help but notice the lady sitting on the sidewalk. Her hair was like a color-gone-bad sort of pink color and her twitchy expressions to the police officer made me wonder if she was okay. Her long cigarette proved they had not been there long and by the looks of the officer, she was not backing down or quieting her sass.

While my ear bud wearing oldest was tuned into her favorite latest podcast, my middle making expressions into her reflection in the window at herself, and my youngest counting his toes, I couldn’t help but stare into the rearview mirror. I ordered, and drove forward. To my right, three other officers were handcuffing a man. The heaviness I felt for the situation, was real.

My middle piped up, “Mom, what are they doing?” In excitement, said “I’ve never seen a police put those things on someone!” My mind raced with all of the possibilities as to what we had maybe just missed, or what had happened.

In all the chaos, an elderly woman with large eye-goggle looking sun glasses, barely seeing over her steering wheel, had slowly pulled up behind me in the drive-thru, unaware to all that was going on around her. I imagined that her car smelled of English Rose perfume and vanilla, running her morning errands, topped off with a drive-thru coffee and fresh chocolate chip cookie.

As I paid for my order, the drive-thru window employee seemed distracted and looking past me to what was happening with the officers and man in handcuffs. She kept her cool and took my 8$. My heart was heavy. Consumed with love for them, all of them. For the why. Why had this happened. What were their hearts hurting from, that drove them to choices that landed them here.

I couldn’t help but want to shift the mood, the moment, the atmosphere, with a little bit of kindness. I quietly said to the employee that I would like to pay for the order of the car behind me. As I pulled away, the girls were firing questions at me at all they had just witnessed, while little man was still counting his toes, singing to himself. I could feel the girls staring at me. The employee had said, “wow, you’re really nice.”

But that wasn’t the point.

I explained to the girls that sometimes people just need to know that someone cares. That the world has corners of love and kindness, even in the crazy. Asking, how can they make someone smile today? And what sort of thing can you think of that would help someone out today?

The seeds we sow of kindness will harvest a lifestyle of love in action.

For a neighbor, a broken stranger, a hungry child, a homeless veteran. People like the woman on the sidewalk and the man in handcuffs, may or may not be sitting in a church Sunday, but we are the church. We carry it close to our hearts and draw them to the heartbeat of Jesus. His heart. His love. It’s not just a building, but a lifestyle.. “when you do unto the least of these, you have done it unto Me.” Mathew 25

The world is starving for it. In need of love that collides with us straight from Heaven.

A barefoot church. Be the seed. Harvest a lifestyle of love.

And see a love revolution unfold.

We love, because He first loved us.