Thomas’ tears surprised me. They came on so quickly, so sorrowfully.
Madalen and Isaac were going on a bike ride, and he wasn’t invited. When I assured him that he just needed to ask, he wasn’t convinced. Soon one of them told him, without enthusiasm, that he could come along, but it just meant that they wouldn’t be able to go where they had intended. He cried harder, and with more frustration.
“Tommy, they said you could go along,” I told him, as though he hadn’t heard.
“They don’t want me to come,” he replied. The tears were hot as they rolled down his red cheeks.
I wasn’t sure what to say. Them not “wanting him to come” had never stopped him before. But this time he wasn’t so easily soothed.
“Can you tell me why you are so upset?” I asked.
Flustered, he poured out some of his sufferings at being left out and, without a break, added, “And last night when we were at the park playing Frisbee, they never passed it to me.”
My heart hurt for a second. All the kids and a few friends had been across the street playing the night before, and I know that there was no intentional leaving out. The friends are more like family, and they would all have been playing as one big group. It wouldn’t even have simply been a sin of omission. If anything, it was the innocent thoughtlessness of one small child with regard to another small child.
But as he cried it out, I wondered at the pain he carried from that one moment of thoughtlessness. For a full 24 hours he had carried it with him. In the fun and hustle of friends playing outside, he had felt forgotten, and it hurt.
It made me think of the pain that each of us carries around, certainly for more than 24 hours. How vulnerable we are at our cores. It’s like we carry a little target pinned to our hearts, and through the years the arrows have accumulated.
His tears made me stop, internally, and wonder at how many of the arrows in his heart were thrown by me. How many arrows in the hearts of friends, family, strangers? Thoughtlessness, selfishness, impatience, attempts at being funny, attempts at being sage, self-righteousness. Each and every word, glance, sigh, post, eye roll that has caused another of God’s children to carry another world-wound … I suppose it is just another part of our post-Eden humanity, to be thoughtless, to be selfish.
The past weeks have seen a world in chaos. We are a world in pain. There are wounds that have been carried for generations. I know the temptation to say, “But I didn’t cause those wounds. I cannot be blamed for them.” But a Christian is not called to neutrality. Not doing anything wrong is not good enough. Christians are expected to be proactive in goodness, to be full of thought.
Mother Teresa said, “Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God’s kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile.”
If we are to ease the suffering of those we encounter, those God has given to us, we must be intentional in our kindness. And because I know a little of Mother Teresa, I know that her meaning of kindness is not the “make a donation and pat yourself on the back” type of kindness. It isn’t only the “random acts of kindness” thing, something good but possibly disconnected and detached. It is the “kneel in the dirt and embrace the leper” type. It is the putting up with, encouraging of, listening to, inviting, and welcoming of those less than desirable in our eyes, but worth dying for in God’s.
Loving our neighbour, as Christ loved us, is a commandment, an expected sign of a life of grace. Without it, we are making liars of ourselves, and discrediting Christ. We are the ones called upon to change this hurting world, not as mandated by the world, but in the image of God’s goodness.
