These last 24 hours have been interesting for me; it seems like I've gone through a lot of emotions with the different things that have been taking place. It's been interesting because I looked at those emotions and wondered how they need to be handled. My daughter was talking to me about her computer, bought less than a year back, which has already been sent back twice to the manufacturers and they've not really done a good job. It was upsetting – having spent money and yet not getting value for it. Through all this, I was reminded about what I had spoken to another audience a week back about anger management. Our Scriptures inform us that we can be angry but must not sin or let our behavior be inconsistent with what is good and productive.
It took me back many years to a time when I was in college. We lost five students on a slippery slope. It was a snowy day in the US. The news that came to the campus was that the car had been hit by a truck while turning a bend and had gone off the mountainside. All five of those students died. I remember how it affected all of us who knew them. Our vice president, the academic dean, talked to us in the chapel and said, "This morning I went up into the mountains and I shouted out angry questions at God. I just vented. That's what you need to do – you need to be able to channel the behavioral response to the emotion that you are feeling." Growing up, I remember one of the things I would do when upset was go to a little pond near our house and skim stones across the surface of the water – something my dad had taught me. That was my way of expressing anger without hurting anyone.
Everything going on in my life brought back these memories of delineating between emotion and behavior and making sure the behavior is not harmful in any way, either to me by its repression, or to others by its expression. When we go through these types of situations, if we keep our eyes open, we often have opportunities to recognize how God sends kind people our way – those who may speak a beautiful word or do something that just lifts our spirits.
In school, having just moved from Bangalore to Chennai, my family was at a point where we weren't doing very well financially. Dad was struggling with payment of fees and so on. I used to wait with baited breath for the first week of the month because the prefect would walk into the class with a list of students who had not paid their fees. I hated being on that list because you had to stand up; it was kind of a shaming experience. I remember a kind person, an uncle of mine who was in the office there. One day I was cringing because I knew the fees hadn't been paid and yet, when the person read out from the list of names, mine wasn't on it. I couldn't believe it. This uncle, (I don't know how he managed it – maybe he put in the money) just to avoid me being embarrassed, got my name off the list. There was nothing I had done to deserve something like that. It was just an act of kindness. I remember meeting him last year. His health was suffering with age. I asked him whether he remembered this incident. I could see he didn't, even though I related the whole story. The spark that came into his eyes however, told me he liked what he was hearing and that it meant something to him to hear about this, years after it had happened. God decided this morning that it was time to take him back to Himself. His loan to us in this world was over.
He was a kind person, and sometimes we too can be agents of kindness to people around us, with far-reaching consequences. Maybe today is a day we just need to look with a different lens and see if anybody around us might need a kind word or action, and if it could come from us. Not to get anything in return – but just to be a kind person.
Glen Campbell wrote a song many years ago that said:
Don't walk around the down and out;
Lend a helping hand instead of doubt,
And the kindness that you show every day
Will help someone along the way.
You've got to try a little kindness.
Yes, show a little kindness;
Just shine your light for everyone to see.
And if you try a little kindness,
Then you'll overlook the blindness
Of narrow-minded people on the narrow-minded streets.
Maybe these words resonate with you. Maybe today will be a day of multiple acts of kindness because we've made it a priority. I'm going to try that today and my prayer is that you would too.
Allow me to say this prayer on your behalf. Almighty God, let our eyes focus on the down and out today. Help us to see brothers and sisters standing by the way, needing our help. Help us not to be found wanting today, but to be able to sow an act of kindness that will lift another's spirits today. In Jesus' Name we pray, amen.
• http://www.cowboylyrics.com/lyrics/campbell-glen/try-a-little-kindness-642.html
• Biblical reference: Ephesians 4:26
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