Yesterday a friend posted in her Facebook feed about creating a calendar for her kids with a month of random acts of kindness. I immediately jumped on the bandwagon because, as she said, there is nothing better that we can do then work to raise up others. Also, teaching our children, the next generation, to be kind to others goes a long, long way to making them kind and thoughtful adults.
Then last night when we were getting ready for bed, E pulled a library book out of the book bin that I hadn’t read yet – “Ordinary Mary’s Extraordinary Deed.” It was like kismet. This ordinary looking book is actually a beautiful explanation of how small random acts of kindness and the theory of paying it forward work together to change our world for the better.
This simple story shows how one day, an ordinary little girl picked some ordinary blueberries and secretly left them on a neighbor’s porch. This made her neighbor so happy that she baked a batch of muffins and left a plate of them for 5 people that she thought might have left her the berries. This sets off a chain reaction of good deeds from newspapers not being thrown in the bushes, to helping strangers with heavy bags, helping a poor man pay for groceries, and helping the homeless. In the end, the good deed manages to come back to Mary when an aunt surprises her with a necklace.
We can all use a little reminder that random acts of kindness bring about extraordinary change.
Lovely idea and lovely book to read.
What an extraordinary idea! Great review!