Eternal Awareness

Our lives are filled with a busy-ness that is sometimes overwhelming.  Between work, family obligations, sports events, our children’s schedules and other events demanding our time, it’s hard to look past what we need, much less what our neighbor next door, or down the street is going through or even needs.  We seem “forced” to stay disconnected and “at a distance”, if you will, from surrounding issues, because it’s just more than we can handle. 

There are those who haven’t a clue who their neighbor is, even when they live in the same apartment building.  Community bonding, where everyone knows everyone else does happen, but not nearly as often as it used to.  Communities would often congregate at the local church every week, where it made it relatively easy to stay in touch with neighbors, even if your neighbor lived several miles away.  The church was the “community hub.”

Those kinds of situations are now rare.  In a single community there may be two, three or even four or five different churches. Even with that many, people, because transportation makes it extremely easy to travel 20-45 miles away, attend a church totally away from their community. This then, creates a “break” in the continuity of community.  We just don’t know many we live near.  Being involved in our neighbor’s lives, therefore, happens less and less.

Still kindness is something many people try to remain involved in.  And there are many options for ways to be kind to others. In fact, if you look on Pinterest you can find literally hundreds of ideas for ways to be impactful in other people’s lives.  Now, of course, not everyone looks at life that way.  There are those who are unable to look past themselves to care one whit about someone else having a bad day, having financial difficulties, martial, health or other kind of issue to do anything about it.

            For those who do choose to help someone else, do we the recipient, wonder about their motives?  I suggest not usually, especially if the kindness comes from someone we know, even if not well, when it comes from our church community.  When kindness is random, it does sometimes send off signals we don’t always recognize, and will cause us to question why.  

            When Jesus walked the earth, he continually did seemingly totally random acts of kindness.  Everything he did was for someone else’s good.  His heart was always pointed toward the Father, like a compass is predisposed to point to true North!  As an example of genuine kindness, Jesus showed us the value of keeping our hearts, here on earth, focused on heaven.  He shared this concept repeatedly with those whose lives he impacted.

             Should we, when we carry out acts of kindness, examine where our heart is pointed?  Are we being charitable because it’s the “decent” thing to do, or responding from a sense of duty, or even just being reciprocal because kindness was once offered to us?  How would our thought process look if we considered the kindness because our heart was pointed towards the Father?  Does our kindness include sharing the Gospel like Jesus demonstrated?