Gratitude Exposes often unknown beauty

​Earlier this week, Max Homa was sitting in a Chick Fil A drive through getting ready to pay for his meal. That's when the server informed him a lady in the car one row over had already paid for it.

Was she completely unaware that this was Max Homa, the golfer who'd just finished third and won a cool million bucks at last weekend's Masters golf tournament?

I'm pretty sure he could afford his own spicy chicken sandwich combo.

Well, it turns out she was very aware of who he was and what he'd done. Homa is her young son's favorite golfer, and she wanted to pay for his meal to thank him.

It can seem like such a meaningless transaction. Or on the other hand, outrageous maybe - a seemingly ordinary mama shelling out 15 bucks to pay for an uber famous golfer's lunch at Chick Fil A.

But I think it's much more than that.

Gratitude takes titles out of the equation. Gratitude takes the size and means of the gratitude extended out of the equation. Gratitude is simply a human to human expression, or a human to God expression, or just quite simply a human expression, that says I notice you and what you have done, and it means something to me.

Max Homa, you mean something to my kid, and I need you to know that means something to me.

In response to the act of kindness, Homa said he still has to pinch himself when people show him such kindness because he plays the game of golf.

To this mom, it was much more than that. To this mom, it was a golfer having a beautiful influence on her child's life. And as a dad, I have felt that overwhelming need to say thank you to people for that kind of influence on my own boys' lives.

Gratitude was her way of saying we aren't in different worlds. You aren't of the golf world and I'm not of the parenting world, we are of the same world.

Gratitude bridges worlds in a beautiful way. It's the loveliest kind of invitation to look into one another's worlds.

Gratitude looks beneath the surface of what someone or something is, and looks deeper into the beauty they add to our lives. Gratitude is the way we express the beauty we've discovered.

So many people are contributing beauty to the world in ways they don't know. Gratitude is our way of helping them know it.

Maybe that's the ultimate power of gratitude. Maybe it exposes beauty in the world that would forever go unknown without gratitude.

If so, it makes gratitude not only a good idea, but pretty necessary to the mission of making the world a more beautiful place. And it can start in places as simple as the Chick Fil A drive through.

I myself think that's a fine place to start 😊.