Kindness

Be kind to each other, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, just as God through Christ has forgiven you.

Ephesians 4:32

Did you know that there’s a World Kindness Day? This day, dedicated to acts of kindness big and small, is celebrated on November 13 in many countries. If you haven’t heard of it, that’s not surprising. Most people haven’t. But if you look on the Internet, there are websites devoted to it. The websites even have ideas for ways to show kindness, including giving care packs to the homeless, collecting coats for needy families, donating books to the library, reading to a young child or an elderly person, taking supplies to the local chapter of the Humane Society, and writing a thank-you card to the fire department.

God doesn’t have one day devoted to kindness. He wants you, his princess, to show kindness every day. He wants you to have a tender heart that’s filled with kindness and forgiveness. If your heart is holding bitterness or resentment toward someone, you can’t really be happy. Resentment robs you of your joy and replaces it with bad feelings instead.

The key to having good relationships with friends, family, and peers is to forgive mistakes and hurts rather than dwell on them or feel sorry for yourself. Don’t think up ways to repay someone with unkindness. On your own it might be hard to show kindness instead of holding a grudge when you’ve been wronged, but God can help you with that. He freely forgives you, so he’s more than willing to help you do that for others.

When your heart is filled with feelings of kindness and forgiveness, every day can be Kindness Day.

Make this week Kindness Week for you. Write down one thing you will do each day to be nice to another person. You might do a chore for a sibling or a parent, pick up trash at school, rake the yard for a neighbor, say something nice to the first three people you see at school, or make a card for a janitor at your church. Maybe you can involve your whole family and bake cookies for the bus driver or a Sunday school teacher, take your old towels to the Humane Society for the pet kennels, or think up another project that shows kindness.