The ministry of kindness is unceasing. It keeps no Sabbaths—it makes every day a Sabbath. It fills all the days and all the nights. In the true home, kindness begins with the first waking moments in the morning, in pleasant greetings, in cheerful good wishes, and then it goes on all day in sweet courtesies, in thoughtful attentions, in patience, in quiet self-denials, in obligingness and helpfulness.
Out in the world, kindness goes everywhere with happy cordiality, its gladness of heart, its uplift for those who are discouraged, its strengthening words for those who are weary, its sympathy with sorrow, its interest in lives that are burdened and lonely.
Some of us, if we were to try to sum up the total of our usefulness would name a few large things we have done—the giving of money to some benevolent object, the starting of some good work which has grown into strength, the writing of a book which has made us widely known, the winning of honor in some service to our community or to our country. But in every worthy life, that which has really left the greatest measure of good, has been its ministry of kindness. No record of it has been kept. People have not talked about it. It has never been mentioned in the newspapers. But where we have gone, day after day—if we have simply been kind to everyone, we have left blessings in the world which in their sum far exceed the good wrought, the help imparted, and the cheer given, by the few large, conspicuous things we have done, of which we think and speak with pride.–J. R. Miller
