Unexpected Kindness

Yesterday I received a synagogue voice message from a woman named Rose, who found a Starbucks card in front of a supermarket with my name on it.  She explained that she knew how valuable these cards are, because she has one herself. As I was the only Gary Pokras she could find, she asked me to let her know if the card was indeed mine.

What a wonderful act of kindness!  This lovely human being went way out of her way to help a total stranger.

As it turns out, the card was mine.  I called her back, and left her a message of gratitude, letting her know that I would be happy to meet at her workplace so that she would not have to go any further effort to return it to me.  This morning I received another message from her.  It was already in the mail.  You see, she was leaving for a week's vacation and did not want me to have to wait.

There was a time when is was fashionable to talk about random acts of kindness.  A whole movement developed out of this concept, encouraging us to look for random and unexpected opportunities to do a kind deed.  It felt great to perform these random acts, but do you know what feels even better?   Daily acts of kindness.  Do we really think that "Love your neighbor as yourself" (Lev. 19:18) is about occasional or random behavior?

Rose was not doing a random act.  She was clearly operating from a deeper place.  If we could all do the same, if we could all go out of our way to act with kindness and compassion every single day, then we would truly be bringing the Levitical commandment to life, loving each other as ourselves.  Compared to most of our experience, THAT would be ... unexpected.