Act of Random Kindness

I love quiet nights at home. They seem far and few between lately but I'm working hard to enjoy them when they're here!

Today was some house cleaning, enjoying homemade soup and herb-cheese bread and then relaxing to watch Evan Almighty. Not exactly an Oscar winning film but thought-provoking none the less. There's a reason that we often teach through story. For all it's fun, Steve Carell filled antics, there were some themes, one in particular that caught my attention.

The premise is that Steve Carell's character, Evan Baxter, Jim Carey's news anchor co-star in Bruce Almighty, has been elected to congress, running on the slogan "We can change the world." His entire platform and election is based on his desire to be a world changer. The night before his first day, while getting ready for bed, his wife suggests that if he were to pray, he should ask for help with the task. "If I were taking on something that big, I could use a little help," she tells him. And so he does. He prays for help. Amidst all the story that goes with...well...with building an ark, one conversation with Morgan Freeman's version of God stands out to me. God asks, "How do you change the world?" and answers the question by saying "one act of random kindness at a time." Which, coincidentally, or not so coincidentally, can be summed up by the acronym ARK. Go figure.

It's true though, isn't it? I want to change the world, to leave it different than I found it, but if I were to try to do something radical that would change it all at once, I wouldn't know where to begin. I can, however, start with one small bit at a time exactly where I'm at. At the grocery store. At the pool where I work. When I drive. In my home. With my friends. Each small act of kindness will change my world and, hopefully, the ripple effects will be far reaching, beyond me and my ambitions. I can build my life into the life of a world changer 'one act of random kindness' at a time. I figure, if I live that way, I might just be surprised by the way I've impacted the world by the time I'm done.