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from Volume 26 No. 1 July-August 2005

A Kind Word

I'm lucky to have wonderful friends who always seem to know how to say the right thing at the right time. They are generous with compliments and always have words of encouragement. Many people are not as lucky and they never get a kind word or compliment from anyone.

Some people are stingy with their compliments. They hoard kind words like a miser hoards gold.

There is an old story about a stingy man at this wife's funeral. He said, "I'm going to miss my wife. I loved her so much that once I even came close to telling her that."

Everyone needs to hear a few kind words every day. It lifts our spirits, warms our hearts and makes us smile.

Last week, I was standing in a long line at the market and the cashier was very nervous and struggling to keep up with the customers. When my turn came, I told her how much I liked her sweater and what a beautiful color of green it was.

Her face changed in an instant. The frown was gone. She smiled and her whole body seemed to relax.

"Thank you," she said, "This is my favorite sweater and I wore it today because this is my first day on the job and I was hoping it would make me feel better and bring me luck."

Two of us wished her good luck on her new job and the rest of the people in line were more patient with her once they knew it was her first day at work. Everything changed because of one compliment.

We all need a kind word, a smile, a hug, but even more important, we need to give them to others. If all we did each day was to give one person a compliment or a smile, we could make 365 people a year feel better. If we could make three people smile each day, we could make life a little better for over one thousand people a year.

I used to live in the mountains, thirty miles from the city. The road was long and winding and sometimes it seemed to take forever to get home.

There was an old man who would sometimes sit on a bench near the road and wave at every car that went by. I would watch for him and when I saw him, I knew I was half way home. He'd smile and wave like an old friend and I'd wave back. When the weather was bad and he couldn't sit outside, I missed him and the rest of the drive home seemed longer without his smile.

I never met him. the road was too narrow to pull off and visit. All he did was smile and wave at the cars going past. Each day he touched hundreds of lives, in a month thousands, in a year he cheered tens of thousands and all he did was sit beside the road and smile and wave. He wished us a safe journey home. He made a difference in our lives every day.

"The right word at the right time is like precious gold set in silver." (Proverbs 25:11, CEV)