Do Small Things With Great Love

Do Small Things with Great Love

Do everything with love.

1 Corinthians 16:14

When she was just fourteen, my mom experienced the loss of her own mother. My mom was the youngest of four children, and her older siblings were already grown, so she lived alone with her dad.

When the time came to bring a dish to a gathering of the Luther League at her church, my mom confided in a good friend that she didn’t know what to do; all her friends’ mothers would be doing the cooking, and my mom didn’t know how to make the Jell-O she was supposed to bring. The friend went home and told her mother about my mom’s predicament. In response, that friend’s mother took the time to write out three pages of Jell-O recipes, front and back, so my mom would have ideas of different things to bring to church anytime there was a function.

The funny thing about those pages of recipes is that my mom still has all of them, now yellowed with age. They still show the kindness of a mother to a young woman who needed help. One recipe that includes strawberries and Cool Whip has even become a family favorite of ours over the years.

As I listen to my mom tell this story, as I watch her pull out the recipes and run her hands over the worn pages, I’m sure that the other mother did not realize that fifty years later, those recipes would still matter to my mom. She never knew that those handwritten pages would become a reminder of the kindness of another during a difficult time.

When we do everything in love, we’ll begin to see and notice the small ways we can have a big impact on someone’s day. Who knows? Maybe fifty years from now, someone else will tell their own story of our kindness to them, just when they needed it most.

—Kendra

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Take time to listen for a simple need that someone has, and then take a step to meet that need.