TO WHOM CAN I SHOW KINDNESS?

 September 06, 2024

Galatians 6:10 

"So then, as we have opportunity, let us do good to everyone, ...."

Our week of Devotions ends with a story I read recently, a true story, I would like to share with you. The author, Jennifer, describes the following event,

I went with our son and daughter to the store to ship some boxes, and I didn’t know then that I wasn’t fine. I felt like the clerk was being aloof and unhelpful, and almost instantaneously — and without empathy — impatience and judgment flashed hot and demanding within me.

And the feeling didn’t repel me; I leaned in.

My tone, an instrument effective in its ability to help and to hurt, switched like a light gone out. It became a twisted comfort–this feeling of power: choosing to be harsh instead of kind.

“You were not nice,” my son tells me when I turn away from the clerk and towards the door. Embarrassment swells in my chest, an icy familiar chill. My first instinct is to defend, reject, and explain. I can feel the wrestling match begin within me, shame feeling like a too-heavy blanket pressing on my chest. Was I unkind? Yeah, and no one deserves unkindness.

Every have an experience like that? After I read Jennifer’s account I was remeinded of something that Mother Teresa said,

"Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile."

That’s very good advice and teaching don’t you think? “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier.”

That does not come naturally to us. (Maybe I should be saying that doesn’t come naturally to me.) Don’t you find that lasting change is difficult, I sure do. That is why we so desperately need prayer, healing, and the Holy Spirit alive in our hearts.

Will you pray with me that the Holy Spirit empowers us to do whatever it takes to get better, day by day, at being the living expressions of God’s kindness: kindness in our faces, kindness in our eyes, kindness in our smiles? Amen.