Kindness: an expression of God's heart spoken into our daily lives. In the midst of the struggle, in the grit of everyday, through the mist of tears...a light shines through.
Kindness takes many forms and can be seen in the shape of...
Little known friends bumped into in a restaurant who send a special dessert to our table for Valentine's Day.
A Thai principal of our school who takes our car in the middle of the day to get our air con fixed so we can survive the heat.
A thoughtful handwritten letter from a friend in the States.
A roommate who picks up french fries as a special treat for us (because she knows how much I love them) even though she's already had a long busy day.
A man from a ministry down the road who gave up at least six hours to figure out and fix my computer.
Friends from Australia who are here working hard for our school, who have continually bought dinner for us even though we agree that next time will be our turn to pay.
My student and his mother and Khruu Ooy who all dropped what they were doing and came to help us after our car accident.
Our boss's wife giving us Honey Bunches of Oats when she got a two pack for a good price. (Cereal is expensive and so we only eat care package cereal).
Weeks like these when kindness floods over my life I'm reminded of the prayer of a young girl in Africa. A girl who prayed that the Lord would send that afternoon a hot water bottle to keep a motherless newborn alive and a doll for his older sister...just so she would know that God really loved her. Even though the missionary (Helen Roseveare) doubted that the prayer would be answered, she arrived home to find a box from her home country (the first in four years) that against all odds contained a hot water bottle and a doll, sent five months before so that God could answer the young girl's faith filled prayer. God cares about answering the prayers of His people no matter how young and has compassion on us and does wonderful things...just so that we know He loves us.
The cool thing is that we as His people are often allowed to share in His outpouring of love. Sometimes He allows us to be the vessels through which He shows His compassion, kindness, and love. The people mentioned above have shown me this week by their kind actions the nail scarred hands of my Savior and His love.
"It doesn't matter whether I travel 6,000 miles or just twenty minutes from home....What matters is whether the people we meet matter to us as much as they matter to God."
Helen Roseveare
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