On the day of writing this, it’s the anniversary of the death of my aunt. Parts of that day will always stick in my mind, and in some moments, tears accompany the memories. However, this is not a sad thought. I went to church this morning, for the first time in a few weeks, due to a combination of being away, unwell, and watching a world cup final. I don’t know if that was the reason or if it was pure chance, but one of the members of the pastoral team decided that today I was the person to be given the flowers after the service.
Whilst I am fully aware that it is a conscious decision by the team to give the flowers to someone at the end of the service, the fact that they chose to give them to me on this particular week felt very much like a random act of kindness. Nobody here would have known what today signified, in fact I only remembered part way through the service this morning. It’s never easy to remember painful days, but moments like this make it much easier.
Jesus reminded us to love our neighbour as ourselves, and something that I feel makes the world a wonderful place is that we all have different ways of doing so. In the time that I knew her, my aunt was always one of those people who radiated kindness. She always had time to listen to everyone, and I still remember on the final visit I made to her, being struck by how much she wanted to know about everyone else and what we had been doing instead of spending time talking about her “little issues” as she called them.
We’re all given different skills and gifts to enable us to show others Jesus’ love, and this morning reminded me that some of the most powerful of these moments can come from the smallest of gestures. I read a book a few years ago that was prompting the reader to listen out for “nudges” from God to take opportunities to carry out acts of kindness. The essence of it was that if it only took seconds out of your day, then it was worth doing, because ultimately whether or not it was a prompt from God on that occasion, it still would lead to a good thing being done and for the right reasons.
My challenge to myself following today is to see where I can “pay it forward” and show kindness to others through the upcoming week, reflecting on the gifts I have been given and how I can best utilise those to show Jesus’ love to others.
A prayer:
Thank you Lord, that we are all made so differently and are all able to share our talents with those around us. Help us to listen to you and see the opportunities to make small gestures to others as we go about our daily lives, and have the courage to act on these. Amen.