Umbrella as a Tool

About a week ago, I made an interesting discovery while walking to office one morning. It was raining and I quickly took out my umbrella after alighting from the bus. As I sheltered myself through the rain, I caught sight of a young female walking hurriedly from the bus stop to seek shelter.

Somehow I felt prompted to offer to shelter her to the nearest building, which was actually my office building. Before I did that, I hesitated because I was a little late for work and I needed to rush to tap my card to register the time that I reported to work. Sheltering a stranger in a rain would most likely slow me down… and I was already a few minutes late.

As thoughts flowed through my mind, I found that I could not help but respond to the strong prompting. Whether this has anything to do with impacting my life or her life, I do not know… even as I am typing this Blog more than a week after this had happened. But who knows… God’s ways are higher than our ways, even though I may not be able to tell, now or ever.

Thus, I turned around and motioned with my hands, whether she would like to share my umbrella. She agreed and I sheltered her to the nearest building. As we walked, I asked where she was headed… coz my mind was half contemplating whether I should help all the way, by sheltering her to where she wanted to go. But deep in my heart, I was panicking coz I was already late.

My heart smiled when she replied that she was working at the same office building as I was! I think that I must have seen her once before, though we never spoke. Suddenly I realized how useful an umbrella could be as a tool to open up an opportunity to speak to someone and hopefully even share about Christ.

Yet for this instance, the time was just too short to speak much. It was merely a 2 minute walk to the building, so I just didn’t have the chance. Thus, I didn’t say much after asking where she was going; then remained quiet.

She thanked me upon reaching the building and I nodded in acknowledgement. I was late for work… and still wondering how this ‘going the extra mile’ would constitute anything at all, except showing a little kindness of sharing an umbrella. But it opened up my mind to realize that there are actually little things that we can use to reveal opportunities to strike up a conversation with someone, even if it was just one or two sentences. Hmm…