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Wisdom Quote
Be the living expression of God’s kindness; kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile; kindness in your warm greeting.
*Mother Teresa (1910-1997)
Today's Scripture
Be kindly affectionate to one another with brotherly love, in honor giving preference to one another....
*Romans 12.10 (NKJV)
Wisdom Story
According to legend, a young man, while roaming the desert, came across a spring of delicious, crystal-clear water. The water was so sweet that he filled his leather canteen, for he wanted to take some back to a tribal elder. The elder had been his teacher. After a four-day journey, he presented the water to the aged man. The man took a deep drink, smiled warmly, and thanked his student lavishly for the sweet water. The young man returned to his village with a glad heart.
Later, the teacher gave another student a taste of the water. He spat it out, calling it awful. The water apparently had become stale because of the old leather container. The student challenged the elder: "Master, the water was foul. Why did you pretend to like it?"
The teacher replied, "You only tasted the water, I tasted the gift. The water was simply the container for an act of loving-kindness, and nothing could be sweeter."
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Musings of a Modern Day Mystic
My God, you are teaching me not to underestimate, indeed to value highly, the power of a presence of kindness. I am learning this in two ways.
First, you teach me this through the marked influence of others upon me. Their simple, often quiet, presence of kindness, even when I have not deserved it or asked for it, has a powerful way of giving me faith and renewing my hope. Your grace, which is your active kindness to all creatures, touches me deeply through the presence of these persons of gentle and gracious tenor.
Also, I am learning this power of a presence of kindness by the effect I have on others. I have often underestimated the influence I was having on others, influence not principally by what I shared of ideas or active deeds but of simply being who I am when I am at my best for you ~ a conduit of your kindness. I find that this being kind, as long as I am joined with you in daily intimacy, spontaneously flows through me.
I find, still, that in me I am not necessarily very kind at all. I accept that the unselfish beneficence that flows through me is only because of my choice to live from you, even as you and I live in each other.
Therefore, my God, I cannot claim that I in myself am kind. I do not, however, confess that I in myself am unkind. Indeed, to be or not be kind in myself is of no interest to me, for you, whom I have chosen in your choice of me, are the animating influence of my every movement, inward and outward, of and toward good. I claim no kindness in myself, then, but only in myself within Christ, and our being together, with all life, in you.
Continued... |
