Sermon Illustrations
Employee's Small Act of Kindness Rewarded By Warren Buffet
Joel Prusak was an employee at the ice cream chain Dairy Queen. One day, as he was serving customers their food, he noticed that a blind man had dropped a twenty-dollar bill on the floor. A lady standing in line quietly bent down and put the twenty dollars into her own pocket. Young Joey Prusak approached the lady, asking her to give the twenty-dollar bill back to the blind man. She refused, quite aggressively, claiming it was her own. And then Joey did something very generous. Quietly, he opened up his own wallet and handed the blind man a twenty-dollar bill of his own. The man took the money gratefully, and the Dairy Queen resumed normal business.
A customer in line observed the whole episode and sent an e-mail to the Dairy Queen management, informing them of Joey's act of generosity. The DQ management then posted about it on Facebook, and the event went viral. A couple of days later, Joey received a call from the billionaire Warren Buffet, a big investor in Dairy Queen. He thanked Joey for showing such integrity and asked him to come to the next Dairy Queen investors' meeting. As Joey was an employee and representative of Dairy Queen, Buffet wanted him to be there as an integral part of the fabric of the organization.
Joey's act of generosity inspired thousands of people to believe that they, too, could do something small to impact the world for good. It was a small act—with a huge impact. And so it is with God. He takes our small acts of obedience or kindness or goodness and multiplies them for his good, and ours. So don't wait until you can do big things; start small. Sometimes small seeds grow into large trees, and sometimes they fail to thrive.