Matthew 25: Small Acts of Kindness
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I was hungry and you fed me.
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From 1831 to 1833 the Choctaw were forced from their homelands in the Deep South to a reservation in Oklahoma.
It was impossible to recreate their traditional ways of life in Oklahoma, and difficult to create any sort of prosperity. Nevertheless, the Choctaw people were deeply moved by the stories of starvation and mass migration that came from Ireland in the 1840s.
It was a journey that was all too familiar to them.
In 1847 they managed to scrape together $147 to buy food for Irish people. In today’s money, that would be around $5,000. That might not have been enough to stop the famine, but for a people struggling to survive it was a princely gift.
It was a gift the Irish never forgot.
The sculpture shown here is called “Kindred Spirits.” It would be at home at most any tribal center in America, but it stands in Middleton, Ireland; not far from Ireland’s southern coast in County Cork. The people of County Cork recently spent over $100,000 to erect the monument in honor of the gift of the Choctaw. It is a testimony that such an act of compassion touches lives for generations to come.
“I was hungry, and you fed me.”
When you are hungry, no act of compassion is small. When you are struggling to survive, no act of friendship is wasted. When you show love, the land remembers.
What act of kindness will you commit today? No matter what it is--it won't be small.