HOW KIND CAN YOU BE IN 2018?
“And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.”
—Ephesians 4:32
“Be ye kind one to another.” What a great idea! What a dynamic concept! And, what a wonderful opportunity we who are still around to begin this New Year have to put it into action. Some (hopefully few) will have the opportunity to get started doing this. The rest of us will have opportunities to get better and better at being kind. Let’s do it!
Kindness has been defined as, “a language the dumb can speak, and the deaf can hear and understand. “Years ago, a famous young Englishman named Henry Drummond wrote in his diary, “ I wonder why we are not all kinder to each other than we are, How much the world needs it! How easily it is done.” A good question! Most of us could be a lot kinder on a daily basis than we are. And what a difference a little kindness would make to all of our relationships and in us. Aristotle said, “The unfortunate need people who will be kind to them; the prosperous need people to be kind to.” The great English author, William Makepeace Thackery wrote, “Never lose a chance of saying a kind word.”
Did you know there is an organization called The Human Kindness Foundation? Its cofounder, wrote: “Don’t overlook the significance of your smallest opportunities for civilized behavior throughout each day. The world changes for the better with every act of kindness, and for the worse with every act of cruelty.” Be kind to the unkind. “Ask thyself, daily, to how many ill-minded persons hast thou shown a kind disposition?” (Marcus Antoninus).
Resolve to be a kind person—kinder than ever! Be kinder in 2018 than you have ever been in any other year of your life! And, remember that what goes around, where you are concerned will most definitely come around where you are concerned. Lloyd Shearer wrote: “Resolve to be tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant with the weak and the wrong. Sometime in life you will have been all of these.” In other words, we reap what we sow. That’s the law of the harvest, which also decrees that we reap after we’ve sown and more than we’ve sown. So sow kindness.
William Penn said, “I expect to pass through this world but once. If, therefore, there be any kindness I can show, or any good thing I can do to any fellow being, let me do it now, and not defer or neglect it, as I shall not pass this way again.” What good advice for all of us for this New Year.
A wise man once wrote, “Wherever there is a human being, there is the opportunity for a kindness.” Do it now!! Start with the person nearest to you. Apply the “Three Foot Rule” to people. Give everyone who gets within three feet of you a kind word, a smile, and show them any other act of kindness you can. Be kind at home, at work, in church, to the people you meet in public. Ratchet up the kindness you’re showing those closest to you by a few notches —then, start amazing strangers with your kind demeanor towards them! John Wanamaker, who built some of the greatest department stores in America wrote: “To miss an opportunity to do a kind thing, to give someone innocent pleasure or lend a helping hand where needed, if in your power to do so, may be to risk the loss of a happy memory that might sweeten and lighten your way later on.”
“There are many fine things which you mean to do some day, wrote Glenville Klieser, under what you think will be more favorable circumstances. But the only time that is surely yours is the present, hence this is the time to speak the word of appreciation and sympathy, to do the generous deed, to forgive the fault of a thoughtless friend, to sacrifice self a little more for others. Today is the day in which to express your noblest qualities of mind and heart, to do at least one worthy thing which you have long postponed, and to use your God-given abilities for the enrichment of some less fortunate fellow traveler. Today you can make your life significant and worthwhile. The present is yours to do with as you wish.”
Aesop, the author of the famous Aesop’s Fables also wrote something that we need to be reminded of every day, and that is that “No act of kindness, no matter how small is ever wasted.” Lay some kindness on as many people as you can to day and throughout the whole of this New Year. Do it on purpose!
I have wept in the night for the shortness of sight,
That to somebody's need made me blind
But I have never yet, felt a twinge of regret
For being a little too kind.
—C. R. Gibson