Digging Deeper: How Do You Define Kindness?
Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony.
Colossians 3:14 (ESV)
HOW DO YOU DEFINE KINDNESS?
For me, it is being present, being a listening ear, being a calm voice in the middle of someone’s storm. I think of small gestures, smiles and high fives. I think of being the one who steps in when it feels like the world has turned its back.
When I imagine kindness that Jesus showed as He walked the earth, I can’t help but picture a man with his hands constantly stretched out, a man that listened intently. I imagine a man that was judgement free as He helped and healed those He encountered.
One vivid image I have etched into my memory of kindness happened last summer. I watched as my mom was given the gut-wrenching news that her breast cancer was back, and this time the prognosis was terminal. She had multiple tumors in her head, and her time here was more limited than we ever imagined. I stared at her with tears streaming down my face as she lay stagnant in the dark hospital bed. The news of her prognosis was still washing over her, precious doctors and nurses continued to spill in and speak this overwhelming reality to her. All she did for those horrific hours was listen, soak it in and trust. She could have been filled with bitterness and anger. She could have harvested resentment, lashed out or argued. After all, she’d already fought this fight and won just a few short years before.
But, she didn’t. That’s not who she was and that was not who God was to her.
Instead, in those broken moments she spoke life into her nurses. She exuded joy, she smiled constantly, she inquired about her nurses’ lives. With every shift change she started her kindness all over again. She was fully invested in who they were, and less concerned with what she was going through. In those short days we spent in the hospital, my mom was the epitome of kindness to the crew that cared for her. She was a shining example of Jesus to them even in the midst of her darkest hours. After all, isn’t that what the Bible wants us to do? Are we ever really more like Jesus than when we are kind to others? You never know what impact a smile, small gesture, or kind words can have.
I pray as you walk through your day, in your highs and lows, that you can show kindness. Be present, listen, show up in the moments that God needs you too. Wearing a smile on your face in the midst of a battle just may be a shining example that inspires someone else.
Kelly Skelton is a Georgia native, raised in the south on Jesus, Georgia football and sweet tea. She is her husbands’ biggest fan and her two daughters’ loudest cheerleaders. She recently published her first children’s book titled, But God Had a Plan. She stays active in the Dallas area as a photographer, videographer, writer, and middle school teacher.