“But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.” Luke 6:35
If we are supposed to love and do good to our enemies it would seem that we should do the same to our friends and family. To my way of thinking most of us would give a plate of fresh cookies to our enemies but the ones we would offer to our loved ones might have frosting or double chocolate chips. I remember that as I child there was a particular winter when we had a ton of snow and since school was closed I shoveled snow off the sidewalk in front of the houses on my block and a woman two houses from my house, Mrs. Boals, asked if I would do her driveway as well since her husband was not feeling well. I gladly did and she said that she would like to pay me but didn’t have any money and presented me with a plate with a few cookies.
This verse from Luke reminds me of the phrase ‘random acts of kindness’. How many opportunities have you been given along your journey to reach out to a person in need of a random act of kindness? How many dead auto batteries were in need of your jumper cables? How many items were dropped along your journey that you took the time to stoop down, pick up and return to their owner? How often have you given assistance to another human being when it wasn’t expected? The Haitian word for kindness is ‘bonke’. Albert Schweitzer said “do something wonderful, people may imitate it” when asked to give an example of the word kindness. Random acts of kindness come in many different forms; the attached photo reflects one. This child who lives in Ouanaminthe is carrying a plastic bowl with his daily meal of rice and beans that is in hands because somebody donated a quarter. This small random act of kindness took place in the lives of over seventeen thousand children when this child was photographed on October 5, 2010.
I doubt that few if any of the Trinity/HOPE supporters are seeking to be repaid for their kindness and many of the donors that I know are the type of people who would say that it is better to give than to receive; their random acts of kindness are not just limited to children living in Haiti. There is a quote by Margaret Cho that defines the person responsible for this bowl of rice and beans; “Sometimes when we are generous in small, barely detectable ways it can change someone else’s life forever.”
Dear Heavenly Father, you have called your servants to ventures of which we cannot see the ending, by paths as yet untrodden, through perils unknown. Give us faith to go out with good courage, not knowing where we go but only that your hand is leading us and your love supporting us through Jesus Christ our Lord and Savior. Amen.
May God be with you…Jay