If this story don’t make you tear up, you need help!
OMAHA, Neb. — The young father stood in line at the Kmart layaway counter, wearing dirty clothes and worn-out boots. With him were three small children.
He asked to pay something on his bill because he knew he wouldn’t be able to afford it all before Christmas. Then a mysterious woman stepped up to the counter.
“She told him, `No, I’m paying for it,'” recalled Edna Deppe, assistant manager at the store in Indianapolis. “He just stood there and looked at her and then looked at me and asked if it was a joke. I told him it wasn’t, and that she was going to pay for him. And he just busted out in tears.”
This is not an isolated incident, according to K-Mart officials:
Dozens of other customers have received similar calls in Nebraska, Michigan, Iowa, Indiana and Montana.
The benefactors generally ask to help families who are squirreling away items for young children. They often pay a portion of the balance, usually all but a few dollars or cents so the layaway order stays in the store’s system. * * * “It is honestly being driven by people wanting to do a good deed at this time of the year,” said Salima Yala, Kmart’s division vice president for layaway.
It’s spreading to other stores:
The good Samaritans seem to be visiting mainly Kmart stores, though a Wal-Mart spokesman said a few of his stores in Joplin, Mo., and Chicago have also seen some layaway accounts paid off.
There’s more:
In Missoula, Mont., a man spent more than $1,200 to pay down the balances of six customers whose layaway orders were about to be returned to a Kmart store’s inventory because of late payments.
Store employees reached one beneficiary on her cellphone at Seattle Children’s Hospital, where her son was being treated for an undisclosed illness.
“She was yelling at the nurses, `We’re going to have Christmas after all!'” store manager Josine Murrin said.
Now I am back from finishing off a tissue box(!), then we have the Krugerrand placed in a Salvation Army kettle in the Keystone State:
The Evening Sun newspaper of Hanover reports (http://bit.ly/s2eFxm ) a gold South African Krugerrand was discovered Wednesday in a kettle outside a Walmart near Gettysburg.
The valuable currency has appeared in Gettysburg-area kettles for several years. But no one knows who should be thanked for the generosity.
And the truly rare $10 US gold piece found in Kentucky kettle:
The 1880 $10 gold piece with a Liberty head on one side and an eagle on the other was put into a kettle at the Cynthiana Wal-Mart earlier this month. A similar coin sold for $900, according to an Internet search.
But as wonderful as that is (And I hope the next one is in our area!) that pales in comparison to what God did for us in Jesus Christ!
“But not as the offense, so also is the free gift. For if through the offense of one many be dead, much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace,which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many.” Romans 5:15 (KJV)
But wait, Sandy, you’re taking something really nice and wonderful and using it for a sermon! But why would people do that anonymously? They can’t claim it on their taxes. Maybe they are following Jesus’ words in Matthew 5 not to draw attention to their good deeds. Or maybe it’s something else.
How do you explain how a Nazi party member who hired Jews to work in his factories to save them from the Holocaust? Oskar Schindler had no apparent deep motive, even after the war:
No one knows what Schindler’s motives were. He was quoted as saying “I knew the people who worked for me… When you know people, you have to behave towards them like human beings.”[19]
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him, male and female created he them.” Genesis 1:27 (KJV)
About Elwood Sanders
Elwood "Sandy" Sanders is a Hanover attorney who is an Appellate Procedure Consultant for Lantagne Legal Printing and has written ten scholarly legal articles. Sandy was also Virginia's first Appellate Defender and also helped bring curling in VA! (None of these titles imply any endorsement of Sanders’ views)
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