Random Kindness

We in the modern world have a tendency to approach life as a sequence rather than a series of moments.  Life is a constant; it's moving and changing and evolving.  I, like most, schedule my time, set goals, press ahead toward achievement and accomplishment.  Anything that gets in the way, I sometimes view as an interruption of sorts.

Today I read various stories in the Bible and began to notice how different Jesus' approach to life is from mine.  His encounters with people seem to be a series of random occurrences.  Often he let others determine his schedule.  He gave full consideration to interruptions, never allowing them to anger and dissuade him.  He paid attention to those who approached and saw worth and value in each person he came across.

Often when I ask others "What are some of the most memorable moments of your life?" I receive similar answers from dissimilar people.  Narratives come back in story form depicting someone who displayed kindness, who showed concern, who took the time to stop and listen, to hug and touch.  In short, most describe an experience where someone exhibited a random act of kindness towards them.

Life is relational, not formulaic or propositional.  More than anything, Jesus demonstrated this in his earthly life.  At no point do you see him holding seminars to offer the world propositions on how to get along.  He didn#226;#128;#153;t write books containing divine formulas for success and fulfillment.  He wrote no manifesto on life.  Unlike Muhammad and other so-called enlightened ones, Jesus penned nothing.  Others wrote about him, and what they wrote is what he displayed, what he lived out.  The majority of stories about Jesus centers on some dynamic of relationship.  His two great commandments are built on principles of relationship.  Absent of relationship there are no commandments to follow.  You can't love the Lord your God with all your heart or love your neighbor as yourself without relationship.

Jesus is a full embodiment of the Kingdom of God.  His life displays how this Kingdom functions.  Repeatedly what we see through his actions are random acts of kindness.  Jesus went around looking people in the eye to tell them they were beautiful, that he stood for them, that he believed in them.  He was not afraid of controversy, of revealing the worth of those considered worthless.  Often Jesus shunned the in-crowd by extending kindness to the outcasts.  I think of all the so-called losers of society whom Jesus touched and changed: the cripples, the blind, the lepers, the prostitutes, the poor, the wicked, the diseased.  Entire communities shunned these and told them they were no good.  But God, the King of the universe, walks down the street, looks them in the eye, holds their hands, heals their infirmities, visits their homes, eats at their tables.  That must have been the greatest moment of their lives.  His kindness unlocked the door to their hearts.  Kindness rearranged their entire world.  Twenty centuries later, that same type of kindness was still at work in the Cosmos, transforming a young boy's life and altering his destiny on a flight from Chicago.  As I read the story, I could only think #226;#128;#147; this is something Jesus would do.

At his best, when the darkness subsided and the sun shone brightly, Walter Payton could be spectacular.  He was one of football's true icons, a player so esteemed that the NFL's Man of the Year Award bears his name.  Those who knew him closely said he was a man addicted to laughter.  When he was happy, all he wanted to do was laugh and laugh.  Like most of us, he had many flaws.  But beneath those flaws was an inherent goodness and deep love for people.  He had a genuine desire to make people happy.

If fans approached him with footballs to sign, Payton first insisted on a quick game of catch.  If they wanted him to shake a child's hand, Payton knelt down and engaged the youngster in a conversation about school.  He understood the power of embracing another life, the impact it can have.  While traveling to Orlando for a vacation in 1996, Payton, sitting in first class, was told that a ten-year-old boy named Billy Kohler, who needed liver and kidney transplants, was on the plane, heading to Disney World courtesy of the Make-A-Wish Foundation.  Touched by the story, Walter asked the flight attendant to bring Billy and his father to the first class section.

The flight attendant walked to the back of the coach section and approached Billy and his father, "There's someone who would like to meet you in first class."  As Billy and his father are escorted to the front, they see Walter Payton standing in the aisle.  Walter greeted them and knelt down to Billy's level and said, "You have been facing a lot of adversity.  But know you will come through this.  No matter what follows, you need to keep your head up, you need to keep fighting forward, and you need to believe.  You have gone through more in your short life than most of us have in a lifetime."  Overcome by the moment, Billy started sobbing.  Payton reached out, embraced Billy, then tickled him beneath his chin. "You are a hero," he said.  "Just know that you are a hero."

That particular encounter had an enormous impact on the life of young Billy Kohler.  Through the dismal, excruciating and frightening months of undergoing two vital organ transplants, Payton's random act of kindness helped push him through.  On the darkest of days when Billy felt he would lose the battle for his life, Walter's words, "Keep fighting forward," propelled him to hold on and not allow his spirit to succumb.  One man's kindness dislodged the grim reaper's grip on a young boy's life, supplying him with the strength and courage needed to hold on.  Billy Kohler was not dragged through death's dark door because kindness stood in the doorway and blocked his path.  Death returned to the grave empty-handed.

It's a powerful occurrence to have someone look you in the eye and say, "You are worth something."  We owe it to ourselves and to others around us to engage in such unforgettable acts.  Deeds of kindness are a flourishing feedback loop of blessing to our lives.  Not only do they awaken life in others, paradoxically, they replenish life in our own hearts, in our immediate world.  I have seen this notion proven in the life of a young man whom I met three decades back when he was a student in my youth ministry.

Jon Pritikin is a dynamic individual and one of the greatest communicators I know.  His gifts have taken him all over the world, placing him in settings often incomprehensible for a Christian speaker.  In the last year alone, Jon has spoken to Arab and Jewish Schools in Israel, Palestine and Jordan; been a featured guest on MTV and the highest rated talk shows in Asia; conducted hundreds of assemblies in public schools in North & South America, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East; and ministered to vast audiences #226;#128;#147; some a million plus #226;#128;#147; throughout the Buddhist, Muslim and Hindu regions of our planet.  Not only has he been well received, he's been invited back and given the keys to schools, cities, and nations.  Doors have opened wide for this young man for one reason #226;#128;#147; his kindness.

Jon is one of the kindest individuals I know.  I have seen his life in every setting imaginable and ceaselessly and endlessly, he encourages people, he builds them up, he lifts their spirits.  His acts of kindness are constantly inspiring others and bettering their lives.  Never have I heard him speak an unkind word of another.  His life is a living testament of kindness.  And that kindness has returned to him a hundredfold in the opportunities he has been given.  Kindness opens your life to a world of bounty and blessing, it opens doors leading to wonder and astonishment.

A person's worth is determined not by appearance or income, ethnic background or citizenship status, but rather is bestowed as a sacred inviolable gift of God.  How we respond matters.  Our choice of kindness makes a difference not only to us and our own destiny, but amazingly, to God himself.  God gives us all the opportunity to participate in the restoration of people's lives.  He allows us to help reverse the pain and unfairness of this world.  Like Walter Payton, like Jon Pritikin, like Jesus himself, may we be kindhearted people.  Random kindness makes a loving God visible in an unloving world.

P.S.  For more information on Jon Pritikin, go to Feelthepower.org.  I highly recommend you support his ministry.

Reflections

It has taken me a long time and involvements all over the world to learn what I now know about love and fate and destiny, about God and life and the choices we make as individuals and how those choices influence and impact, yet do not concretely define nor do they necessarily shape us or our future. 

Somehow, through the screaming in my mind over these last four years, in times of a shackled and bloody helplessness; times of being chained and treated like an animal, tossed and locked in some chaotic world of disbelief, I realized I was still free; free to dream and believe, free to hope and pursue. 

It does not sound like much, I know.  But in the grasp and wound of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom becomes a universe of possibility.  The choice you make between your past and your future, by selecting freedom despite circumstance, you can rewrite the story of your life and ultimately lead to fresh beginnings filled with the same wonder once lived and experienced.  Except maybe, this time around you will experience a heightened awareness and intensified sensitivity to the important affairs of life, to issues that genuinely matter, leading you to a strengthened contentment and gratifying fulfillment neither temporary nor fleeting.

In my past, inexplicably and for reasons unknown, I often failed to express the feelings in my heart to those I love and care about.  Words that I should have spoken were left unsaid.  Perhaps this is the most important verity of life I have come to realize and comprehend.  By choosing freedom in captivity I have illuminated my past, flashing great light in shadowy domiciles of that past.  The past reflects eternally, between two mirrors, and our lives are lived within those reflections – the bright mirror of words and deeds, and the dark one, full of regret from things we didn't do or say. 

The past, for many, is repressive.  It can bind and muddle, loot and plunder, completely disrupt and impede the future, causing one’s life to be lived in the dark mirror.  Or the repression can breed resistance through the choice of freedom.  The truth is, no matter where you've been or what you've done, no matter how good or bad the experiences, you can change your life with the single act of choosing freedom. 

Choosing freedom empowers the repression of the past to become resistance; resistance from making similar mistakes; resistance from living in a realm defined by any given environment; resistance from responding in kind to unkind acts and words of insult and injury.  Choosing freedom has taught me to resist living a life in which people are taken for granted, where expression, gratitude, and kindness remain in some untapped reservoir of the heart, foolishly believing those articulations will avail themselves somewhere down the road.  Words and deeds left unexpressed are not saved but squandered.  May we not waste those moments we are given to enrich the lives of others whom we love and cherish.  May we live every day in the reflections of the bright mirror.