Love can be abstract in relation to the people down the road and on the far side of the world. “Kind” is concrete and do-able. Kindness means action, words, money and time. Kindness is about loving and doing. I will be kind today and God will help me be kind again tomorrow. If I am practicing kindness toward my neighbors, it may just occur to me to be kind to myself. If I eat four vegetables and three fruits and walk two miles every day, what a kind friend I am to me!
This message is adapted from “And I Ask God to Help Me” written by Marj Leegard in the January/February 1999 issue of Lutheran Woman Today (now Gather) magazine. Today we remember Benedict of Nursia, Abbot of Monte Cassino, who died around 540.