One Small Thing for Love

By Harold Klemp

I got a letter from a woman whose life had pretty much caught up with her and stomped her down. She was fed up. In her letter she said, “Harold, tell it to me straight. What do I need to know?”

I wrote back to her, “Do one thing each day for love alone. Don’t expect any kind of reward.”

When the woman got my letter, she was so excited. She called up her friend, “Hey, Harold actually reads these letters. He wrote back to me!” She wanted her friend to go to the mall with her so she could tell her all about it over tea or a snack. But her friend said, “I can’t go to the mall with you; I’ve got a meeting.” So the woman went alone.

She was sitting by an outdoor fountain in a courtyard enjoying her tea. The letter had opened up the love inside her, but there was nobody to share it with. She wanted to spill this love across the table. But the ECK wanted to teach her how to give love in the most humble way.

The woman noticed a small flock of birds hovering around the fountain. Remembering the message I’d given her, she said, “How nice it would be if I had some bread to feed the birds.” And just like that, out of the sky came a chunk of bread. Who knows where it came from. It hit her on the shoulder and fell to the ground in front of her. “Heaven does provide,” she laughed, and she fed the birds.

After she’d fed them all the bread, her friend walked up. “The meeting was canceled,” she said. “We can have lunch after all.”

Love gives a shortcut to heaven. The birds couldn’t return the woman’s love as her friend might have been able to. Her lesson was to do one little thing each day for love and love alone, without any expectation of reward.

If you try this exercise, I think you’ll find that life gives you more and more.

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Excerpted from Stories to Help You See God in Your Life, ECK Parables, Book 4.