love rock

time for another phenomenal merch table story.
i love music festivals and got the opportunity to work a table at the biggest festival in minnesota. now this festival usually attracts teenagers with skinny jeans, lip rings and loads of eyeliner but there will always be the sweet (and slightly weird) adults that come too. i really hope that when i'm 45 i'm still out there rockin' out for the newsboys reunion tour. and it will be the rightful newsboys too, peter furler taking lead and phil joel behind the bass. but i digress.
so i'm behind the table, talking to folks, selling cd's, having a grand time. the band whose table i was working had just finished their show so it was packed with everyone clamoring to get their autographs. craziness ensues for about an hour and left standing at the table is the band, myself, and one lady in a visor, sweatshirt tied around her waist and a handful of rocks. on each rock there was a word.
she had made it her mission to give each member of every band a rock that weekend. i cannot imagine the hours she had put into making these rocks, there were literally hundreds! she stuck out her hand for me to pick a rock, i told her i wasn't in the band and she said to take one anyway since i was serving that weekend. at first i found it a bit silly and just picked the smallest rock i could, it happened to say love on it. i tossed it in my purse and forgot about it.
i found it sometime later and realized that she was just doing what she could to be an encouragement to the bands in their ministry. she spent time making those rocks, she had the guts to talk to the bands and pass them out, she probably knew that most of them would end up on the ground somewhere never to be thought of again, but she did it anyway because it was how she knew to love on those bands. i still have my love rock.
i hope this post is an encouragement to the three of you that read this to get out and love people in whatever way you can. i'm not saying to go write on a bunch of rocks and pass them out to your friends (not gonna lie, i still find the whole rock thing a bit strange) but find however it is that you can love on people and do it! you might make a bigger difference than you realize.
xo