Random Act of Kindness

I simply have to tell this story...
This morning at 4 A.M. our doorbell rang. It took several minutes for me to come out of a deep sleep to panic and tell Romeo get up. Notice I said Romeo...I was scared. I mean who rings a door bell at 4 in the morning? Finally, because he wasn't so sure about opening the door to a perfect stranger, Romeo looks through the front window to try and get a peek and then yells through the door to find that its our next door neighbors. She happened to be coming home from a late night trip to the hospital with her father to find that there is water running down the street. It turns out the water was gushing from our front yard. The water main had burst, and unfortunately it wasn't the meter that the city would have had to fix. It was our do-dad, I'm sure that's the technical term, that runs into our house. In case you don't know...the city won't fix that. So, our neighbor was kind enough to turn the water off told Romeo to turn the water heater off so that there would be no danger of it bursting too. Well, that threw a kink in our morning. We were without water on a Sunday morning. Those of you who know the Brinkleys know that it is a miracle if we ever get to church on time. Lord knows we try, but somehow we are always five to ten minutes late. We call it "Turner Time". This morning I really needed to be on time. I had to get stuff to church for the children's party, and I was teaching children's church. So, we set our alarm to get up even earlier to go to grandma's house to shower. Side note-we were still only ten minutes late to church even with the water fiasco. We spent several hours at church with services and the party following. Then, Romeo had a leadership meeting at 3:30, so he wasn't even planning to go home until after evening services. I was already panicking! Rome assured me we could have running water by Monday evening. I can't even put my contacts in without water. What in the world I'm thinking. Basically, on the way home I started deciding where we would spend the night. When the girls and I drove up our street, my neighbor, Danny-the guy who turned the water off at 4, was in our front yard with a shovel and a hole in the yard. He had gone to Home Depot, bought the materials to replace the busted pipe, installed the pipe, and was filling in the hole. He assured me he would go get a rake and smooth the yard back out! Did you get that? This man took it upon himself to take care of OUR problem, and he was concerned that I might be upset about the the condition of the sod. It makes me tearful to think about it. Without being asked he performed a Random Act of Kindness. When I called him my angel, he simply replied, "Well, you gotta have water." In return, when I asked if I could please pay him, he said just the cost of the materials...a whopping $15. I bought him a gift card for dinner too. What an example of Christian kindness. Sorry for the lengthy story, but I thought it might make someone else smile too. I know it did me. Maybe you can do something small today to help someone else out. I know I will.