Matthew 25: Small Acts of Kindness
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I was hungry and you fed me.
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In the Appalachian region that I call home, an entirely new culture grew out of a mix of African, European, and Native cultures. The Celts—Scots, Irish, Welsh, and others—often got on very well with America’s First Nations.
There were lots of reasons for that. Both cultures played music that was wild, haunting, wistful, and beautiful. They were both clannish people who valued family ties above all else. They were both warrior cultures. They both understood time as a circle instead of a straight line.
Visit any powwow today and you will see some dancers sporting bright red hair. Their tribal membership cards and ruddy complexions bear witness to the mingling of Celtic and Native bloodlines. Perhaps that is why the Choctaw people cared so deeply about the Irish who were starving during the great potato famine.
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?
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O Creator, it has been a difficult year, but we are still richly blessed.
Open my eyes to see random acts of kindness, and to feed the hunger of others in some small way.
Use me to change this world and touch generations to come.