Welcome to Camp Funk

reflecting on kindness ..part 1

You see, I had always equated kindness with niceness. If you held the door open for the person behind you just to be nice, I thought you were being kind. 

If you paid for the coffee for the person in line at the coffee shop, I thought you were being nice. 

If you spent your morning shoveling the snowy walks for your neighbors, I thought you were being nice.

What I learned is that kindness is different—it’s a part of our new identity as Christians, a Fruit of the Spirit. 

Kindness involves sacrifice, putting someone else above yourself. 

Gary Chapman explains: “Kindness means noticing someone else and recognizing his/her needs. It means seeing the value in every person we meet. And, like every trait of a loving person, kindness can be much simpler and more powerful than we realize."

As I reflected on these truths that were new to my heart, I realized, first of all, that I never read anything in the Bible about being nice—it was all about kindness. And there is a lot in there about being kind! And then I realized that acts of kindness can make a huge difference. And the absence of kindness can make a huge difference, too.

Your time spent pursuing love will not be wasted. The time spent embracing your moments, reading that extra bedtime book, sitting together to dinner, loving a child in their unkindness and weakness matter. Live each moment knowing even your unseen movement toward love and away from unkindness matters.

                                            continued...