Your generous gift of kindness – how much it means

Image: Katie Sloan.

I am not always kind. I recognise that in writing on kindness at least part of what I write is aspirational.

I aspire to be kinder. I assume if you are reading this you esteem the value of kindness. You appreciate when kindness is given to you. We all do. Even those who do not respond to kindness do so because there was a lack of kindness given to them from the very start.

To be caringly kind is to recognise the deeper value held close to the human heart, which craves to be loved, and hates to be judged. This is the very closest explanation regarding the horrors we see in our world — those who lived in a void of kindness, who as children were shrouded in the darkest evil, may either never respond to kindness or they may be so committed to it that they are evangelists for compassion.

Whichever way we look at it, we are dependent on kindness from our fellow humanity.

This is because life is chock full of unfair surprises, confusing choices, outrageous circumstances, calamitous disappointments, and dramatic betrayals.

What life offers is a stinging reproach on the design for life that the original blueprint mandates.

Our human hearts
crave to be loved,
and hate to be judged.

Give your kindness generously because
you know how important it is to you,
so you know how important it is for others.

Our soul decree is that all should be well, but all is not well in this life.

This is why Jesus dying on the cross and being raised to new life gives many of us so much hope. It is a way of explaining how kindness wins the day; that is every day.

This Jesus came to ease our burdens, and to lighten that heavy load that we carry on our backs.

And only God knows how different our burdens are, one to another, and how different we are, yet how similarly we are emotionally arranged. We can certainly agree that our burdens are not that dissimilar, nor are our reactions, nor for that matter are our responses of discouragement.

The only way that our burdens are lightened is through the kindness of others, which we can see is a gift that, before God, we are worthy of.

If we are worthy of God’s kindness, we are worthy of another human being’s kindness, and other human beings are worthy of ours.

Burdens are worn many a different way,
kindness lightens them every single day.

If we are so different, and yet we all respond the same to overall kindness, there is hope for us in the giving out of a kindness. As we give out these little morsels of hope and of life, we experience the life the other gets in the receipt of kindness, and that feeds us spiritually.

When others feel fairly treated,
most of the time,
they treat us more fairly back.

And yet we can try something revolutionary.
We can simply be kind because we can.

In the very moment that we observe a burden in someone else, that moment we can choose to ease a burden with a little kindness. We are never told to give too much, but we are asked to give what little we are prompted to give. And in a moment of giving what we can give, without thought, we receive the spiritual blessing of life — the type of life that we could call abundance — a life that is more ours the more we give ourselves away.

None of us knows the burdens any of us are wearing. Even the people we’re in constant contact with, and even our marriage partners.

Only we, alone, can testify to the discouragement of life. If we’re discouraged, we know that others feel it, too.

We can do our generous gifts of kindness because we know how important kindness is to us.