Far Too Kind.

Hi my baby girl,

First of all, if you were here, you would LOVE today's weather. Just gorgeous! With the sun and the blue sky and snow and frisky air...gorgeous!

it's so BLUE!

But today something very sweet happened. I just wanted to share it with you because it reminded me of an important lesson, which us humans tend to forget so easily.

Today I was walking for a meeting to my office and I was focusing very intently on where I stepped because now the roads are quite slippery and I did not desire to fall. So I was walking when I saw this fairly elderly lady walking towards me so I smiled at her and she smiled at me and said 'Hei'. My heart leaped up inside of me with joy because for months and months I have been trying to smile at people on the street here and for my 8 months here, maybe one or two people smiled back. Glum, I know. I would tell daddy, I am going to get people to smile at me!! I was determined! And she smiled!! And then I was walking more and ANOTHER gentleman smiled at me and said something inaudible but who cares! He smiled too!!

Now you are probably wondering what is the big deal here. Two random people on the street smiling at you. But here in Finland, it just doesn't happen that often. I come from Sri Lanka where everyone is smiling at each other and whistling at girls on the street and laughing at random people. So I miss that!!

And then I thought about kindness. Their little smiles brought me so much joy. I don't know why, but it did. I was smiling like an idiot the whole way to my meeting. They probably don't know what an impact they had on me, but I was quite grateful to God for our short encounters.

It made me think more about the impact my actions have on others. Am I too busy to be kind to people? Am I too absorbed in my own life and my own problems to be unselfish for a few seconds to smile at someone? Or give them a small compliment? Or just check up on how they are doing? What impact am I having on people? How is my life touching others?

Because the reality is, everyone is busy. I don't know what we are doing so much, but somehow we are always busy. Busy getting rich, mostly. So busy that we have forgotten to be kind to others. Especially the people we don't know or won't benefit us in anyway. Also we are scared to be kind to people. What if they take advantage of us? We never have time for others. We are far too busy thinking of ourselves. Even if someone is writhing in pain on the floor, we don't have time to stop and help or we are too scared to get involved. Let someone else take care of it. No.

I like to take my example of living from Jesus. The kindest man I know. He hung out with the rejects in society. Showed them love. He gave to the poor. He went out of His way to be kind to people, no matter how tired He was. He encouraged people. He gave them hope and life. He gave people second chances. He didn't judge people the way society did. Eventually, He gave up His life on a cross for the very people who pinned Him to it.

I want to be like that. I want you to be like that. Kind to the core. I never want to be too busy to care about people. To smile at strangers. To encourage those who are down. To pray for those who need it. To push down the walls that people have built up because they are scared to let people in. To tell others about how much Jesus loves them. To bake a cake for someone else. To send a text or message to someone telling them I'm thinking of them. I never want you to be too busy for those things also. These are small things, but important things. And it doesn't matter if anybody notices or you feel it's insignificant. What matters is you do it with the right attitude of being a blessing to somebody else.

Be kind, my darling. Someone else needs it today.

Love mummy