Showing love on the bus

I was running a bit late to work this morning, and of course, that made me even jumpier
than normal. So when I saw a line for the bus this morning, the Mainlander in me wanted to jump the quasi-queue, and revert to beating everyone to the door of the bus to make sure that I could get on... before everyone else. (Yes, I'm shameless when I'm running late and need to get somewhere!)

However, just as I was going to do so, I saw a mom with her toddler out of the corner of my eye hurrying over to try to catch the bus. So, instead of jumping on and leaving them behind, I waited by the bus door, stepped aside, and let them go ahead of me onto the bus. She graciously thanked me, though in retrospect, I think that I should thank HER for helping me to do my act of love for the day.

After that, I thought that was pretty much all the love I was going to show on the bus ride, but little did I know that God had another little incident in store. Since I was the last to get on the bus, I was standing pretty much right next to the bus door. And man, this morning, the bus was PACKED. Now it wasn't as packed as this:

but it was still pretty squishy. Unfortunately, at one of the bus stops, after everyone else had gotten off, and the bus was ready to take off, we heard a little shout all the way in the back from someone struggling to get off. It literally took the person a whole minute to get from the back of the bus, all the way to the door, at which point, people around her where tisking away and quite annoyed that she was holding them up. Apparently, it was a middle school girl who was trying to get off, and why it was taking so long was because she had on one of the biggest backpacks I had ever seen. (I think she was going camping.) But in addition to that, she was carrying 2 large bags holding tents too.

Poor girl, as she was struggling to squeeze through the throngs of people with her huge bags, I could see that she was very much struggling, but also very much embarrassed. That scene really took me back to my high school days when I used to go on overnight weekend hikes, and I felt really burdened to help her, so I literally had to "pull" her and the bags she was carrying through the crowd of people. Although I wasn't able to make eye-contact with her to give her an encouraging smile (she was trying to hide as much as she could under her cap at this point), but she thanked me profusely as she was getting off. I also said a silent prayer for God to protect her on her hike as the bus zoomed off.

Love challenge: Extend a helping hand to those in need... in big and small ways!

"Love is patient, love is kind"