A New Perspective - The One Year Daily Acts of Kindness Devotional

A New Perspective

Direct your children onto the right path, and when they are older, they will not leave it.

Proverbs 22:6

It was as I was snuggling Peanut, our sweet poodle-mix dog, that I noticed a weird white film in one of his eyes. Concerned, I took him to see our vet. Cataracts was the diagnosis, and the prognosis wasn’t great: he was going to go blind. My heart sank as I spoke with the vet about options. He explained the good news that cataracts aren’t painful, but it turned out that treatment options were prohibitively expensive for my family.

While having a dog with a disability wasn’t something we’d anticipated, my husband and I have embraced this unexpected opportunity to help our children gain a deeper understanding of kindness and unconditional love as we make adjustments in our family and in our home for Peanut.

As Peanut’s eyesight has gotten progressively worse, we’ve had ongoing conversations with our kids asking them to consider how he might feel when they get too rowdy with friends and why he startles when we leave something unexpected in his path. When he wandered away from home and into the next neighborhood one weekend after being left outside unattended, we spoke of what it must feel like to be alone, unable to see, and unable to find the way home. While these are all ideas that adults can understand in the abstract, framing it from Peanut’s perspective has given my children the opportunity to grasp these concerns in very tangible, real ways.

Peanut’s blindness has given my children an opportunity they might not otherwise have had—an opportunity to practice empathy by seeing another’s perspective and caring for them accordingly. They are putting into practice the conversations we have about what it means to be both children of God and people who take care of those around them. As with so many other parts of our faith walk, my husband and I pray that these words, these experiences, and these opportunities to reveal Christ through kindness are being soaked up by our children, so that when they are faced with choosing their own path in life, they will fulfill the promise of Scripture and not depart from the path God has set before them.

—Julie

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

If you are responsible for children—whether you’re a parent, a teacher, or a church-nursery volunteer—consider how you can start conversations about helping others in more tangible ways.