A FEW KIND WORDS...

A long time ago when I was living in Bogotá, I attended a conference in a church with the theme of Rick Warren's book A Purpose Driven Life. I had been at his church in California when he closed the 40-day study of the book in small groups for the first time, and I had been deeply struck by his subject.

When the event ended, the speaker who was speaking through a translator in Bogotá, approached me and said: "You have a gift, every time I felt that I was not connecting with the audience, I looked at you and you had a smile from ear to ear and you were nodding your head, that helped me to continue. You have the gift of encouraging others."

No one had ever said anything like that to me, but when I think about it, I believe that God has given me the gift of seeing the positive, the good, and the talents in others and telling them whenever I have the chance. The impact of his kind words has always lingered in my heart.

I was recently reading a woman's story, in which she says that for a full year each day she sent a handwritten letter of appreciation to different people, with a few kind words expressing her gratitude or admiration for each of the recipients of her letter. She says that every time her family asked her dad what he wanted as a gift for Christmas or his birthday, his answer was: "Just a few kind words." Her father had died unexpectedly of a heart attack while he was at a tennis game and she realized later that every year he had given him anything, a tie, socks, a shirt, except the kind words that he wanted so much. That is why she decided to write those letters as a tribute to his father.

Speaking of kindness, I also remember a series that I liked a lot on Netflix, The Kindness Dairies, in which a London man travels from Alaska to Argentina, in a small yellow car, depending only on the kindness of strangers to eat, sleep and fill his car with gas, and the impressive thing about his trip is that many times when he receives lodging, food or an act of kindness, in exchange he gives his hosts the realization of his most precious dreams, be it a trip to Israel, a scholarship to study or money to start his own companies.

A few kind words or an act of kindness towards others can change someone else's life, but above all it will change you.

Would you intentionally be encouraged to perform an act of kindness every day for a year, for 365 days, day after day?

Proverbs tell us, "Kind words are like honey: they sweeten the life and heal the body." Start right now, find someone to sweeten their day and in the process, little by little, you will heal your body and your heart. *

* Proverbs 16:24 NLT