I am a popcorn fan. Not sure where the love of the white, fluffy, salty stuff came from, but I do love a big bowl of popcorn and a hot cup of cocoa on a cold winter’s night.

Actually, any season is the perfect season for popcorn. The crunchy delight goes with just about everything and makes life sweeter even though it’s salty.

A few years ago, Mike got me this amazing stovetop popcorn popper from Lehman’s. It’s like Jiffy Pop, except old-fashioned in a silver kettle with a twirly handle so you don’t have to shake it on the burner. We use that every week, and it makes the best homemade popcorn ever. Much better than microwave popcorn.

This week, I began reading a book titled In a Heartbeat: Sharing the Power of Cheerful Giving by Leigh Anne and Sean Tuohy, the couple portrayed in the movie The Blind Side. In the early chapters, Sean describes what he calls their look at giving as popcorn giving.

In essence, you can’t save everybody, but you can save the people God pops into your life in that moment. Like hot kernels of popcorn in my silver kettle, the hot, oily ones pop up, and beg for your attention right then and there, and those are the people we should give ourselves to.

As I read his philosophy, I was so touched and it really hit home with me, a fellow popcorn lover. We had connected popcorn to our faith before in our family, but only in the form of what we call popcorn prayers. A popcorn prayer is when we stand or sit in a circle, hold hands, and each person says a brief prayer, whatever comes to mind, and the prayer pops around from person to person until we have all spoken our hearts.

But now I can bring popcorn deeper into my faith as I try to pay attention to those people God popcorns in front of me in each moment.

We have been having some “issues” with our Verizon MiFi, and I had to call customer service yesterday. Usually, making a customer service call in and of itself is enough to put me in a bad mood. But I tried to stop, take a deep breath, and see the customer service rep as a piece of popcorn God was popping up in my life. I was gentle in my wording, and my kindness was doubly returned by the sweet customer service representative. My MiFi problem is still not solved, but my heart was touched by the kindness I received when I simply gave it away. Pop.

Then I had to call Walmart and order some subs for a meeting at work. Again, calling Walmart is sometimes a mood-destroyer. But I tried out my popcorn theory again, and what do ya know. The simple sweet words and laughter I used was returned two-fold.

So I am going to take the Tuohy’s popcorn philosophy and try to apply it in my life daily. I am going to try and give even when I don’t feel like giving, to show kindness even when I don’t feel like being kind. To look for the hot, oily kernels of need God pops into my path and in each moment, try to meet their needs, not my own.

I know I won’t always get it right, so don’t look for perfection here. You will be sorely disappointed. But I am going to try and popcorn my faith into my daily walk. And you never know, maybe my life will become sweeter even though it’s salty.