Kindness halts me. Silences me. Takes away all the words that come easy. Not that kindness is a robber, a thief- but that it is just so stunning and brilliant and overwhelming that I don’t always know quite what to do when I encounter it. Kindness shines and brightens. It is light radiating in dark places, revealing beauty in brokenness. Kindness has that kind of impact.
It makes the mundane sparkle.
Are we living in an era bereft of kindness? A time in history exhibiting a deficit of kindness- so that when it does appear, it affects us deeply; so much so that we are impacted- forever changed? Is it that we hardly recognize it anymore? Or is kindness everywhere- we just need the capacity of heart to understand it? But why, when we do encounter it, does it leave us stunned- quite breathless? Overcome? Kindness puts us in sensory overload. For when kindness illuminates the dark corners of our lives, shining its penetrating light: we are temporarily blinded. Bound. Touched. Healed. Moved. Freed. It has that kind of transforming power.
And sometimes we just cannot know even the extent that kindnesses we have offered have touched another life. Sometimes it is impossible to follow the path of kindness. For one random act can lead to another to another to another, leading to kindnesses being carried out in far-flung places, the likes of which, you never imagined your one small act would ever begin to have a connection.
One act done in kindness is all it takes.
The story does not reveal to us who he is- he is just a guy that decided to act on the kindness that was already inside his heart. He saw her there by the subway entrance and he asked her how much her roses were. She replied that they were a dollar each and that she would sell a dozen for eleven dollars. He asked her how many she had and she answered there were one hundred and forty. So he handed her that same amount in cash and told her to give the roses away. To give them for free that day.
He bought an entire collection of roses from one woman with the single purpose of showing kindness. And that one woman was then able to give kindness to one hundred and forty different people in the form of beautiful roses. Who knows where the ripples of goodness ended up from there. All because of a single act of kindness shown to her.
All because of kindness.
<3
:)♡