Today’s Featured Patty Griffin lyric:

We’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
until there are no strangers anymore
-“No Bad News”

That’s a very cool statement. I mean, consider another song where she mentions kindness:

How hard would it have been
to say some kinder words instead…
-“Long Ride Home”

It seems there’s not a situation that a little kindness can’t improve, if not for all parties involved, then at least for you. That’s your choice.

Kindness is a heart condition. Is it congenital? It is pre-existing. We knew this.

We’re studying the Book of Revelation in Institute class. (This is the adult evening class, not the high school morning class I help teach.) We discussed the four horsemen of the Apocalypse; we talked about the seals of that big ol’ book – seven seals, each representing a dispensation of time of the history of man on the earth.

Anyway, the first seal reveals a people whose leader ruled and conquered with faith and righteousness. The sixth seal, representative of the timeframe where we live, foretells of all the natural disasters that (will) occur. And, a time will come when the wicked won’t be able to stand up to the righteous and that they finally realize Whose sword the righteous are wielding. As in the first dispensation, it won’t be aggressive or violent.

I wish I had the wherewithal emotionally and intellectually and spiritually to complete this idea right now. I mean, there is a distinct difference between being nice and being kind. Great faith supports kindness. How else would be possible to forgive? How else, except through faith, could we overcome what’s hard and cruel in this world? How else will we get to know people’s hearts?

My thoughts are fuzzy this morning. Plodding through …

Sometimes, we can’t help but let life happen to us. I would submit, though, that whenever we can, we should be the first to act. Be the one to help the neighbor carry groceries up the stairs; help a blind stranger find a seat on the subway; not to be so caught up in our own world that we allow a person to pass us instead of having him run us over in his haste. It is harder to think this way sometimes, but if we act first to be kind, others now have a choice whether to return the kindness, and we can accept more easily their choice. It’s copacetic. We become less worried about stuff happening to us, because we took the preemptive strike: We were kind.

Be kind first. Fewer regrets that way.

We’ll grow kindness in our hearts for all the strangers among us
until there are no strangers anymore.

I can’t even imagine.