When Cooler Heads Prevail

I had fun last Sunday afternoon and evening.

It was Faith Night at the Mankato Moondogs baseball game at Franklin Rogers park in Mankato, and Kinship Radio had been invited to participate. We were given an area complete with a table and a canopy right next to the people selling hot dogs and other game day favorites. As we unloaded the items we brought, I noted the car thermometer registered 91 degrees Fahrenheit in the parking lot.

Perfect.

The perfection of that sweltering early June day was that we were giving away cooling towels. And, (because somebody on our Kinship team didn’t just fall off the turnip truck yesterday) those cooling towels were soaking in coolers filled with ice water. So, as the crowds passed by our booth we were able to offer them an icy cold towel to drape over their neck and shoulders –free of charge. 

We were very popular.

Gratitude, thanks, and appreciation flowed like a mountain stream. I may have even detected genuine delight in several cases. We shared the towels with others working at the various booths and with Moondogs staff. (Muttnik, the team mascot, politely declined at first but later accepted one during a break.)

In order to ensure that we had enough to give out, we limited the give-away to one towel per family and I noted that in every single case where a parent or parents with a child or children was presented with a delightfully chilly towel, they instantly put the towel on the child with no thought of cooling themselves off first. 

Now, before we dislocate our shoulders patting ourselves on the back for this genius give-away, let’s make sure credit goes where credit is due. The original plan was to give away baseball-shaped stress balls at this event but there was a delay obtaining them. The cooling towels were actually ordered for an entirely different event and brought into action as a last-minute way to save the day. And it was the LORD who decided it was going to be a steamy 91 degrees on the day we showed up with them. 

We do not serve a God of “coincidence.” His plans truly are better than our plans.

As we were packing up to leave, a young lady of perhaps seven years old walked up and, observing that all the coolers and all the posters and all the towels had been packed away, looked at me with no words on her lips but obvious disappointment in her eyes. The decision to give her the towel still draped around my neck took maybe three nanoseconds.

Jesus said it is more blessed to give than to receive –and He wasn’t kidding. 

Today’s Praise

John 3:16

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (NIV)

Photo by Kinship staffer Beth Siebrands, used with parental permission.