Issue 39: “Small Kindnesses”
Our mission at the Matthew 25 Initiative is to equip and sustain Anglicans serving alongside the vulnerable. The work of justice and mercy is often wondrous and also difficult. Holding beauty, naming pain, and contending for hope is what we do at M25i.
Walter Brueggeman writes, "[A poem] thinks the unthinkable and utters the unutterable." In places of brokenness, where much feels unutterable and unimaginable, we encounter Jesus. Continue with us in reflection and prayer through this series, "For the Soul," as poetry offers us Spirit-soaked imaginations.
Before you begin...
We all have a metaphorical tank of grace, strength, love, gumption, and hope. Sometimes that tank feels full. There are days it seems properly empty. We live in times that exact much from our "goodness" tank. Many of us are struggling to navigate the world looking to Jesus as Healer and King. To live generously, boldly, sacrificially is costly when we aren't sure how empty or full we feel on any given day.
With more resources, we can try to purchase goodness and comfort; and when we have support nets, we can turn to others who share generously. The work of M25i is mostly the kind that is spoken of in Danusha Laméris' poem. Through small actions we can participate in God's mission of mending the world. We show up in places of emptiness, and then we show up again and again and again. As God's people, we desire to grow in our ability to see where there is scarcity, where kindness and gentleness might have an outsized impact, and to respond as we are able.
In God's kingdom we believe this: "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you” (Luke 6:38). We believe in loaves and fish that multiply and in oil jugs that keep filling up. Can we be a people of the small things in these days and weeks leading up to the new year, living generously and extending hospitality towards each other with a little extra care? We are invited to be Jesus walking around in the world, mending in numerous tiny ways.
Henri Matisse, Oysters and Wooden Armchair (1943)
Small Kindnesses
by Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
Luke 6:38, NIV
"Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you”
As you read this, who comes to mind? Forward this email to your friends who care about the vulnerable. We hope that they would be encouraged to see other Anglicans who care too. We are not alone in this work. Would you speak a "yes" to this work with a gift? It would really bless us.
