Light in the Window - January 20, 2024

“Be ye kind to one another”

(Ephesians 4:32)

Dear Covenant Family,

Our sidewalks were clear by 9 am yesterday morning, though we don’t own a snowblower. I’m not sure which neighbor just kept going and blowing past our narrow house in the blustery weather, but I’m grateful for the kindness.

Earlier this week, while telling my husband about a difficult day, he asked, “was anyone kind to you today?” Immediately I thought of Shannon, beloved church custodian, who spends each morning in the small booth in our parking lot or doing needed outdoor chores. That morning, as he does most mornings, Shannon rushed to unlock and hold the heavy church door for me as I walked in with my bags, even though I have a key. Shannon is one of the kindest people I know. And when someone is kind to him, like bringing him a cup of hot coffee or a cookie, he always returns thanks.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s book, Letters from Prison, was written in the final two years of his life, which he spent imprisoned in a German concentration camp. Bonhoeffer was a Lutheran Pastor who resisted Hitler and his genocidal persecution of Jews. He was executed by the Nazis a few weeks before World War II ended. Every few letters within the book, there’s some mention of how much a present or a letter has brightened his day. These things are small: his mother sending him some biscuits. A friend sending cigars. A book he had asked for being delivered. A medical orderly who was kind when he was unwell. He describes his thoughts after a visit from a friend: ‘I never like calling anything indescribable, for it is a word you hardly ever need to use if you take the trouble to express yourself clearly, but at the moment that’s just what this morning seems to be.’ This is the impact of small kindnesses.

Bonhoeffer was in prison, writing to his friends about how he was spiritually preparing for death, still attempting to help others. He led services, gave people pastoral advice and wrote to the prison authorities for supplies to help injured inmates. He writes about being surprised by how much of an impact his kindness had on a fellow prisoner who seems to have been in severe emotional distress, saying the man was ‘touchingly grateful’, for what little comfort he could offer.

What kindness have your received lately? What kindness have you offered?

Pastor Jessie

[email protected]

Kindness

by Naomi Shihab Nye

Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to gaze at bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

It is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you everywhere

like a shadow or a friend.

Church of the Covenant | Website | Covenant Life