Outflow

This past spring, our church did an all-church study on the idea of "outflow". We used Steve Sjogren's book, Outflow, in our small groups. The book used the illustration of a multi-tiered fountain that cascaded down from the top to larger and larger tiers. Sjogren used this idea to explain how God's love flows from our personal relationship with Him into our families, our communities and our world. The author included many stories of people who were able to glorify God (make Him look great) in the eyes of other people by doing random acts of service and love. At our church, we referred to this activity as "splashing" people with God's love.

The small group I was involved in had a great opportunity to "splash" some people in our community this week. A friend who goes to our church works in the section of a credit union that does all of the collections/fraud/bankruptcy work. Because of the current state of the economy, her office has been swamped with work and under a lot of pressure. We had been looking for a way to "outflow", and this was a perfect opportunity for us to show God's love. We bought Dairy Queen Blizzards for the employees on Friday afternoon. Several of the small group members went together (the rest pitched in the cash) and delivered the Blizzards, asking "Do you want M&M, chocolate chip or cookie dough today?" We said that we were from Sarah's church and that we knew they had a stressful job. We just wanted to show them God's love in a tangible way. It was a hit! Everybody was happy : ) and we enjoyed being able to do something loving for someone we didn't even know.