“Blessings at Your Fingertips” by Nandell Palmer begins with a simple idea and expands from talking on our fingertips to filling our hearts with love, appreciation, and the desire to do more for our fellow human beings. Within the first few pages, I was so engrossed with this book, thoroughly resonating with his message, my heart filled with joy, that if life hadn’t intervened, I could have read it all day to finish. But life has its drawbacks, and Palmer even has a chapter on how we shouldn’t get frustrated by the drawbacks: that person you might not want to invite to Christmas dinner, but feel you should so they’re not alone. , you can become a blessing to your entire family. Palmer knows what has happened to him.

The book’s title is the heart of Palmer’s message. He explains how we can use the simple things within our reach to advance our greatness and joy. Of the parts of our body, we pay a lot of attention to our hearts and brains, even to our biceps, but we should not discount our fingertips – they can write a book on a typewriter for us, they can play a musical instrument, they sewed The Biblical coat of Joseph of many colors, and they are the ones that Jesus used to write in the sand to save the life of a woman. We pass our blessings on to others using our fingertips, to cook, to shower someone, to write a thank you note. Palmer gives us numerous examples of such blessings throughout his book, making us see the world in new and brighter ways.

Ms. Martin, Palmer’s fourth-grade teacher, exemplifies the blessings that can come from simply using your fingertips. Palmer can vividly remember Mrs. Martin’s class. She remembers the name of each of her fourth grade classmates, something she can’t do in her other classes. Why does she remember her names? Because Mrs. Martin made each of her students feel important. I eat? With an act as simple as using her fingertips to take a piece of chalk and write a student’s name on the blackboard each day, celebrating that student as the king or queen of the day. This simple action caused the students to anticipate who the celebrity student would be each day, and each student put her name on the board at least three times during the school year. No student was overlooked and almost no one was absent from school because no one wanted to miss the day he or she would be celebrated. It is not known where Ms. Martin found the wisdom to do this simple activity (Palmer searched and could not find another example of a teacher doing it), but what she did was build great self-esteem in her students. That simple act changed the lives of her students and, in turn, allowed those students to touch many more lives. If Ms. Martin hadn’t taught the author self-esteem, she might not have written “Blessings at Your Fingertips,” which will undoubtedly touch countless lives, and her classmates have paid dividends in being blessings to others. the rest. simply by the daily act of Mrs. Martin.

Palmer’s kindness is evident throughout this book, and the reader can’t help but like him immensely. An example of his generous heart is how he decided to express his appreciation to Mrs. Martin in a special way when he was an adult; Instead of giving her a physical or monetary gift, he pondered the best way to show his appreciation for her. Ultimately, he launched her personal campaign to collect congratulatory letters to her from every continent, letters that he read to her at a reception held for her in Kingston, Jamaica. Congratulations were received from Queen Elizabeth, winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, Archbishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, the Governor and Senators of Washington State, Antarctic scientists, and educators from around the world, including Canada, Australia, Thailand. and Peru.

The magic of “Blessings at Your Fingertips” hardly ends there. Palmer tells numerous stories, both personal and from people she knows, about the blessings that have come into their lives through generosity and love. He tells how he and his wife adopted his niece’s three children when she died, and the inconceivable blessings that resulted. My favorite story in the book is when his pastor gave him a dollar for correctly answering a question during a sermon. Palmer decided that he would use the dollar as initial capital for it to multiply. After brainstorming possible ways to make it with his kids, he bought some chicken nuggets at Wendy’s and asked his friend to buy them for him for $5. He used that $5 to buy some items at the dollar store, which he later resold. As he told people what he was doing, they became interested in buying things from him until he had $141, which he paid back to his pastor within two weeks. The results, as Palmer explains in more detail in the book, were a windfall of money for his friend who made the first purchase, and for Palmer, fabulous windfalls. With such intriguing stories, you can understand why I found it hard to put this book down.

Of course, no book is perfect; here and there are a few sentences that will sound strange to the ears of the American reader, probably due to some variation in language usage, since Palmer is Jamaican by birth, but the reader will hardly notice, since the meaning behind the words makes them read like gold nuggets. Or maybe he should say diamond nuggets. Palmer also has a chapter on how to retrieve the diamond nuggets from his past. Although some events may seem negative, we can find the good in them. Palmer has a powerful chapter titled “What Does Forgiveness Have To Do With Breast Milk?” that makes us consider, even if our mother or someone else neglected or hurt us, that they also showed us love: our mothers carried us in their wombs, making sure nothing happened to us; they fed us with their own mother’s milk, all these are demonstrations of love. I have had the privilege of witnessing Palmer speak to an audience about forgiveness in person, an experience that can bring grown men to tears.

This book review cannot begin to mention all the gold nuggets that Palmer includes in his book. Other great stories, packed with sound advice, explain the true value of money and how we can use it to our advantage, how bedbugs brought a diverse group of people together, and how to reach out with love to people, including your family members, only to discover that love multiplies and returns to you.

Instead of giving us chicken soup for the soul, Palmer, as the proverb says that you don’t give a man a fish but teach him how to fish, teaches us to look at our fingertips, to consider what that they are able to achieve, to feel good about ourselves and feel good about other people, so good that when the book is finished, we feel inspired to go out into the world and make a difference, whether it’s adopting a child, feeding people homeless or just giving a stranger a smile. “Blessings at Your Fingertips” is, in fact, the feel-good book of the year.