Good Deeds

I happily spent a day this past week in a hospital room, talking with one of my most wonderful friends … a young lady who is almost a daughter to me, starting a program to shed an addiction to pain medicine. It was a good day for her and for me too, seeing her doing well as she started the process. There are no promises on a journey like this, no magic in the future. But it opened a bigger window on her soul to me and it got me thinking about the “magic” of good deeds.

We all do them, most often consciously. Someone asks for help and we respond, or we see a need and fill it. Sometimes the deeds are simple, sometimes onerous, other times we’re not quite sure. But what is sure is how we feel when we’re done. It feels like human warmth and a counterpoint to sin and selfishness.

I think about a time when my wife and I were a consulting couple on a Pre-Cana team at our church, working with engaged couples over the course of several Friday nights, 2 or 3 times a year. Fridays are tiring, the end of a busy week, mentally and physically draining in plenty of ways. But even on the days that we wondered if we could do it, on the worst Fridays of the year, we felt such a wondrous recuperation when we were present to our couples. I don’t know if those were good deeds … after all, we were supposed to be there. But they were good deeds for our souls.

Maybe there is a time to use selfishness to drive us to greater good. We have an inborn capacity to give … our time, our talent, our treasure. But the more we give, the more we learn that makes us better. Not in the giving but in the receiving. I see better now that we are filled and measured by how much we can give, share and communicate with our words and with our actions.

It can be a small thing to do a good deed, as simple as sharing a kind word or smile … and it can be a large thing to do a good deed, changing someone’s life for the better. I pray that we can perceive and accept the opportunities all around us to bask in the magic of our own good deeds … it is our choices, selfish choices meant for good, that can change the world.