Kindness Is a Language Which the Deaf Can Hear and the Blind Can See



"I often have thought that we are a little old-fashioned here in the Ozark hills," writes Laura Ingalls Wilder in Little House in the Ozarks.  "Now I know we are, because we had a 'working' in our neighborhood this winter.  That is a blessed, old-fashioned way of helping out a neighbor." 

"While the winter was warm, still it has been much too cold to be without firewood; and this neighbor, badly crippled with rheumatism, was not able to get up his winter's wood...  So the men of the neighborhood gathered together one morning and dropped in on him.  With cross-cut saws and axes, they took possession of his wood lot...  By night there was enough wood ready... to last the rest of the winter."

"The women did their part, too.  All morning they kept arriving with well-filled baskets, and at noon a long table was filled with a country neighborhood dinner...  When the dishes were washed, they sewed, knit, crocheted, and talked for the rest of the afternoon.  It was a regular old-fashioned good time, and we all went home with the feeling expressed by a newcomer when he said, 'Don't you know I'm proud to live in a neighborhood like this where they turn out and help one another when it's needed.' "

For his merciful kindness is great toward us; and the truth of the Lord endureth for ever.  Praise ye the Lord.

Psalm 117:2

Whoever Gossips to You Will Be a Gossip of You

Laura Ingalls Wilder writes in Little House in the Ozarks:  "I know a little band of friends that calls itself a woman's club. The avowed purpose of this club is study, but there is an undercurrent of deeper, truer things than even culture and self-improvement.  There is no obligation, and there are no promises; but in forming the club and in selecting new members, only those are chosen who are kind-hearted and dependable as well as the possessors of a certain degree of intelligence and a small amount of the genius which is the capacity for careful work.  In short, those who are taken into membership are those who will make good friends, and so they are a little band who are each for all and all for each..."

"They are getting so in the habit of speaking good words that I expect to see them all develop into Golden Gossips."

"Ever hear of a golden gossip?  I read of it some years ago.  A woman who was always talking about her friends and neighbors made it her business to talk of them, in fact never said anything but good of them.  She was a gossip, but it was 'golden gossip.'  This woman's club seems to be working the same way."

Who wouldn't enjoy belonging to such a club?

A gossip goes around telling secrets, but those who are trustworthy can keep a confidence.

Proverbs 11:13