The Cost of Kindness

Submitted by Jennifer Power

I have been thinking, what might life be like if we filled our days full of small acts of kindness? Today, I thought I would set a challenge before you to purposely set out to do as many small acts of kindness as possible, but as I began to write (submitting my words to God) my purpose changed.

I have been on a mission these past few weeks to see how often I can keep God in my mind. Often I fail, though certainly God has been in my mind recently more often than perhaps ever before in my life, so failure may not be quite the right word.

Though I do not keep God in my mind as much as I would like, I have noticed a shift in my actions since beginning this experiment which Frank Laubach calls The Game With Minutes (free text here). Rude/sarcastic/cynical thoughts and comments have diminished, and small acts of kindness have increased. And this change (in and of itself – not the practice of keeping God with me) has been practically effortless on my part – a natural outpouring of the increased awareness I have of God’s presence with me. Though I do not keep Him in my mind as often as I would like, my actions seem shaped more and more by a vague awareness He is with me.

Though great effort has been required of me in this striving for keeping God in my mind as much as possible, all attribution for progress belongs to God alone.

My initial thought when I started this post was to challenge those of you reading to experiment with filling your days full of small acts of kindness thinking surely our lives would be filled with more joy as we allowed God to use us in little things, and certainly our families would benefit tremendously.

However, I cannot seem to bring myself to present such a challenge as I can only imagine it will fail. I have spent so much of my life striving for perfection, and the discouragement (tinted even with dark moments of self-hatred) I experience when my efforts inevitably come up short, is not something I desire for you.

I am reading Letters by a Modern Mystic by Frank Laubach, and in it he says “I must talk about God, or I cannot keep Him in my mind. I must give Him away in order to have Him.”

It was in error I thought I would encourage you to engage in small acts of kindness without mention of the necessity of a heavy reliance upon God to do so. I know many are not in a place ready to seek God in every single moment of every single day for the remainder of this earthly life, and I first thought perhaps more people would be open to simply engaging in small acts of kindness. After all, It has been two years since I asked God to show me how to live for Him in each moment of my life, and He has only just now brought me to a place where I am ready to apply myself to this goal of seeking Him in every moment.

Though this be true, I have realized in this past hour how foolish it is to recommend such a course of behavior by itself, for I cannot escape the reality that my recent behavioral changes are a direct result of this lifelong prayer experiment I have only just begun (but have perhaps been building toward my whole life). I cannot therefore recommend you start with the behavior changes.

As much as I would love to see a radical increase of loving kindness in the moment-by-moment living of the body of Christ, I know it cannot start there and succeed. In my experience, we cannot live a life of unending kindness without a constant stream of grace. Without it, the effort to live better will leave us exhausted, discouraged, and will quite often result in unkind behavior toward those we love most.

So what, then, is the point of this post if not to ask you to engage in more small acts of kindness? Perhaps it is nothing more than to awaken a deep hunger for more of God within you – in your moment-by-moment living, breathing, thinking, working, and being. I believe this living in nonstop submission to and acknowledgement of God to be what it takes to produce fruit within us – the cost of kindness. It is quite possible you are not ready for such an endeavor – I know for a long time I was not ready. Still, I believe God plants seeds in us which He desires to produce fruit if only we will work alongside Him. I pray today, He is doing so for you.

“Child, just as the rice needs the sunshine every day, and could not grow if it had sun only once a week or one hour a day, so you need me all day of every day. People over all the world are withering because they are open toward God only rarely. Every waking minute is not too much.”

– Frank Laubach, Letters by a Modern Mystic