Kindness: the great connector

It is amazing what difference acts of kindness can make!

Just by reaching out and being kind can start a relationship where there wasn’t one.

Like the man who was mowing his lawn, when the new neighbour stuck his head over the fence and joked, “When you’ve finished yours, you can come and do mine!” They laughed and chatted for a while, and then the neighbour climbed in his car and drove away.

As soon as he had finished his lawn, the man hopped over the garden fence and did the neighbour’s. That evening there was a knock on his door. The neighbour said, “You mowed my lawn. Why did you do that?” And so a friendship formed.

Or there’s the woman who was walking down the street when she saw an elderly lady struggling to get her shopping bags out of the car. She was in a hurry to get back to work - but it suddenly occurred to her that she could spare the few minutes it would take to offer to lift the bags to the door.

Or what about the man who was buying his wife flowers (he hadn’t even done anything wrong!). He stood in the queue, waiting to pay, and an old lady standing behind him asked “Are they for your wife?”

The man replied with some pride, “Yes they are!”

“How lovely,”she replied, “I was married for 62 years and every week my husband bought me flowers. He died last year.”

The man said how sorry he was, paid for the flowers and left the shop. Then he stood still on the pavement, knowing what he had to do.

He waited for the old lady to appear, then said, “I know I could never replace your husband - but here, these are for you.”

In all these instances the price that was paid was an investment of time. None of the deeds were very large or cost very much. The kindness, though, opened the way to deeper conversation.

Usually, it’s not that people aren’t willing, but simply that they’re too busy. Whenever we show unexpected kindness, people are overwhelmed. And they often ask why.

Tangier Road Baptist Church in Portsmouth tried to make this part of their DNA. They ran a free fun day every year. One woman who came tried for the whole afternoon to pay something. She tried to pay for the ice cream and was told no. When she asked why, the person serving ice cream said, “Because we’ve received the greatest free gift of all, and we want to share it with you.”

She tried to pay for the barbeque, the bouncy castle, the face painting. But no-one would take her money. They all said the same thing – they wanted to share their greatest free gift with her.

When she got home she couldn’t get that phrase out of her head. She couldn’t work out what it meant - but then it clicked. She wrote to the minister of the church and explained her story, and at the end she wrote: “Then I finally got it loud and clear - it’s Jesus, isn’t it?”

Kindness is the great connector.

Last Updated 04 February 2009