Along the grassy median was a ditch full of black-eyed Susans. I almost hoped the construction traffic I sat it would last a bit longer so I could get a picture. There was something strangely moving about the flowers that softened the harshness of scrubby dirt strip in the middle of a highway.
The world feels a bit like that highway right now. There are traffic jams, unplanned construction, irritated drivers, and lots of loud honking. It feels like we’ll never find the exit ramp off this year, and yet we worry what we’ll find when we finally do.
But in the midst of that, we can be the beauty, if we choose. We can pull out of traffic, get out of the car, and scatter the seeds of future beauty in our words and actions towards others. Whether it’s an extra big smile (the kind that can hopefully be seen behind our masks), or verbal gratitude to the people we interact with, or actually being polite in our literal drive time.
If this long period of life stoppage has taught us anything it’s that little has to be as rushed as we’ve allowed our lives to become.
Go more slowly, and leave room for kindness. Click To TweetI was remembering a favorite childhood episode of the show Adventures in Odyssey. One of the characters sometimes has dreams or visions from God. During a difficult time in the lives of the characters and the town of Odyssey at large, he regularly seeks God in prayer for wisdom about what to do.
He has a dream that there were little fires popping up everywhere around him, but then little pools of water appeared to dowse them out. He interprets that as a message from God to fight the darkness through random acts of kindness.
(The whole season is called From Darkness Until Dawn and I highly recommend it, as well as the rest of Adventures in Odyssey. My own children enjoy it as I did when I was a kid and they are still making them! I feel as though it’s a show you can’t outgrow.)
We can be those pools.
We can put out the world on fire through the kindness we do and the beauty we create. Click To TweetIt often feels as though the world is spinning out of control and nothing we do can possibly make a difference. But it can. Don’t underestimate your power to do good or to help those in your sphere.
Random acts of kindness for sure, but don’t buy the lie of senseless acts of beauty. Beauty can be deliberate, very much intentional. That makes good sense to me.
As I drove past that blooming mile I thought about who might have planted those flowers. Years ago at our MOPS group we made seed bombs. Basically, balls of dirt filled with wildflower seeds that you can just throw somewhere and eventually get flowers.
Our world needs more seeds bombs. Kindness extended without anything expected in return. Art and beauty for its own sake.
May we keep passing it on and may it spread wide and far.
These days are gettin’ real intense,
they say smilin’s a crime,
but you can make a difference
a flower at a time.
Go on and plant a kindness-bloom
that’s watered by your tears,
and soon it will dispel the gloom
that’s clung unto this year,
replacing harried hurried scowls
that uglify the face;
lips that were a-curvin’ down
start curvin’ up in grace
to make of warming mien a mirror
in which we see God, ever-clearer.
We never really know how a small act of kindness might help someone. =)
Bring on the seed bombs!!!
seed bombs of kindness! love that!