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Alison is a seven-year-old girl living in York in the United Kingdom. Alison wanted a popular toy called Squishmallow. (It is a stuffed toy rabbit.) So, Alison saved up her money. She finally had enough, so her mom took her to the Aldi store to buy one. However, the store had sold out of the toy. This brought tears of disappointment to Alison. The store manager then phoned several other stores, but could not locate a toy. So, he offered to bring in the toy he had purchased for his baby. Alison and her mom returned to the store on another day to purchase the toy. But the store manager refused to accept payment. Alison received the toy and named it Jamie, after the store manager.* This story shows an act of kindness.
We are focusing this week on kindness, one of the fruit of the Spirit. It is usually easy to be kind to innocent children like Alison. It is harder to be kind to selfish or evil people. But that is what God does. Luke 6:35 tells us that God “is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”(NIV) God’s example of kindness is also the reason we are told to love our enemies. Doing good to those who don’t deserve it is how we demonstrate that we are the children of God. Our challenge today is to be kind to someone who doesn’t deserve it.
*Megan Shaw and Bradley Jolly, “Aldi worker’s amazing kindness after little girl, 7, saw her toy was out of stock,” Daily Express, April 6, 2021, https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1419435/Aldi-supermarkets-Squishmallow-rabbit-toy-little-girl-tears-York-Easter
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Bumper music “Landing Place” performed by Mark July, used under license from Shutterstock.