Og Mandino is quoted as saying, “Beginning today, treat everyone you meet as if they were going to be dead by midnight. Extend to them all the care, kindness and understanding you can muster, and do it with no thought of any reward. Your life will never be the same again.”
Tenderly caring for the needs of others should be a way of life for followers of Jesus. One of the ways that we demonstrate our love for God is by our acts of kindness toward His other children. James asks, “But if a man has this world’s goods, and sees that his brother is in need, and keeps his heart shut against his brother, how is it possible for the love of God to be in him?” Jesus tells us, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for he is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil.” If God is good to the unthankful, how much more should we take great care to be kind to others. Paul tells us, “And be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you.” God wants us to be kind, we are commanded to be kind because of the kindness shown toward us by God, and God will give us a great reward if we do so.
Sometimes we are so busy that we don’t take the time to stop and help. Instead, we need to take Og Mandino’s advice and treat everyone as if they were going to be dead by midnight because, as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “You cannot do a kindness too soon, for you never know how soon it will be too late.” These thoughts take on new meaning when we experience the sudden passing of a friend. Recently we visited someone in the afternoon who died later that night. We have visited other sick folk shortly before their death, and at the time we certainly did not know that it would be the last day of their life. We saw both of our parents just hours before they died some 18 years apart and had no idea that when we said good-bye to each of them that it was our last time together. None of us knows how long anyone has, and so we should take the opportunity to show kindness whenever we can. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I shall pass through this world but once. Any good therefore that I can do or any kindness that I can show to any human being, let me do it now. Let me not defer or neglect it, for I shall not pass this way again.”
James Henry said, “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.” He did not mind repeating himself when it was so important. Some one has said, “Don’t wait for people to be kind, show them how.” Since Jesus said that God is kind to the unthankful, we don’t wait for them, we show kindness even to those that we might think do not deserve it. “You will regret many things in life but you will never regret being too kind or too fair,” said Brian Tracy.
How will showing kindness change our life? Jesus explained that we will be God’s children, the children of the Highest. Peter tells us that if we add kindness and other virtues to our character, God will make us fruitful and bring us to His Kingdom: “Add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.”
Let us look for opportunities to be kind, to initiate random acts of kindness to others, to treat others as we would like to be treated, and to show the care and love that we would show if we knew that their life would be taken from them this night. We need to take Peter’s advice to heart and add kindness to all the virtues just as he instructed us to do, so that we will never stumble. Truly our entrance into the Kingdom depends on it.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One