Homeless Widower Carries Woman's Groceries, Gets Surprise Blessing in Return

Homeless Widower Carries Woman's Groceries, Gets Surprise Blessing in Return

A homeless widower carries an elderly woman’s groceries and gets a surprising blessing in return. 

We were meant to carry each other’s burdens–not just the weighty ones like cancer, death, or divorce. We were meant to carry all burdens. In this case, it was a heavy bag of groceries for an elderly woman who learned the homeless man named Alfred helping her didn’t want anything in return. 

She assumed he was asking because he wanted money. But Alfred has so overcome with compassion at the way this woman shuffled and struggled with her groceries that he knew she needed just a little help. But the woman felt awful because she couldn’t offer anything in return. When she said so, Alfred’s response surprised her. 

“You look like my mother, and I wouldn’t charge my mother for my help,” he said

Alfred followed the woman home and refused to come in for a cup of tea. As the old woman reflected on the man’s selfless act of kindness, she began to put away her groceries when she found something additional in her bag. 

A necklace with a wedding ring and locket was nestled in the bag alongside her groceries. She knew it was likely Alfred’s, and that it had probably fallen into the bag when he was helping her. What she could not have known, was that she now held the only keepsake Alfred possessed of his beloved belated wife. 

The woman went to the grocery store the next day in order to track down Alfred and give back such a valuable and sacred belonging. 

Through the help of the store owner, they were able to track down Alfred with security guards. What happened next was incredible. 

The old woman wrapped Alfred in a kind embrace and returned the jewelry to him. Because of his kindness and selfless act, the store owner then offered Alfred a job. They had been looking to employ the right person to help the elderly patrons of the store carry groceries for them. Isn’t that just incredible? 

We will never know what burdens another fellow human being carries. Yet, if we help each other carry burdens, a beautiful ripple effect of goodness overflows in so many unimaginable possibilities. 

This story has God’s fingerprints all over it. Only he could orchestrate something as simple as carrying a bag of groceries to help change a homeless man’s life. 

“Bear one another's burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ,” Galatians 6:2.

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