The Crossing Guard on Maple Street

For eleven years, Dorothy Chen stood at the corner of Maple and Third in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, guiding children safely across the street. She knew every child by name. She asked about their spelling tests, remembered their birthdays, slipped encouraging notes into their coat pockets on hard days. When a first-grader's father walked out, Dorothy was the one who knelt down, looked that boy in the eye, and said, "You are not forgotten."

When Dorothy retired, over two hundred families showed up. Parents wept. Grown college students drove hours to be there. The mayor renamed the crosswalk in her honor. And person after person said the same thing: "She made us feel like we mattered."

Dorothy never pastored a church. She never wrote a book or stood behind a microphone. She simply showed up, day after day, and poured out kindness at one ordinary intersection.

Jesus told His followers, "You are the salt of the earth. You are the light of the world." Notice He did not say, "You might become salt," or "Try to manufacture some light." He declared what they already were. The call was not to acquire something new but to stop hiding what the Father had already placed inside them.

Salt does not announce itself. Light does not argue. They simply do what they were made to do. Dorothy understood that. One crosswalk. One child at a time. A city on a hill, disguised as a crossing guard.