It all began when I approached and greeted a member of my ward, who was sitting alone in sacrament meeting, with a hello.
Can you give me a ride Tuesday night? was his immediate response - not a hello or a hi in response.
It was not too terrible of an inconvenience to give him a ride that Tuesday night, but then he called me out of the blue the next week, needing two rides in one night - something for which I had to drop what I was doing and miss a significant portion of an activity I wished to be at the whole time.
My initial thought about my increasing chauffeur duties was, "No good deed goes unpunished." My friend didn't seem to want to talk to me when I tried to be friendly to him unless he needed another favor or another ride. But then I reflected on events some more, and my second thought was "the least of these," as in the scripture we all know so well from Matthew 25:40.
In fact, having spent a large portion of my day today editing a work document about autism - something I really did not know that much about until now - I have thought about my friend a lot and have become more and more convinced that he is also autistic and doesn't necessarily know any better (social skills wise) about behaving in certain settings.
Whatever my friend's real situation may be, I know this for sure: There are people out there - some of who are right across the street or next door, as an Area Authority Seventy said at a stake conference I attended a couple of years ago - whose hands hang low and who need our help if we will but look around for them. Whether it's a simple hello, a pat on the back, or a 10-minute ride across town, they crave our fellowship and our attention.
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