Photo by George F. Mobley
My father tells a story of a time he was in Pakistan photographing sunrise over the Karakoram mountains.
Hiking up the side of a hill in the early dawn to find a good vantage point, he stood shivering in his jacket as he waited for the first rays of sunlight to crest the mountains.
A short distance away stood a simple, stone hut where a sheep herder stayed. A wisp of smoke puffed up from the hut and my father felt a tug of longing for the warmth that surely must lay inside.
As the cold seeped into his bones, he watched as a few moments later, a young boy emerged from the hut, carefully carrying a hot cup of tea in both hands. He delivered the hot tea to my father with a shy smile and scampered back to the hut where his father waiting in the doorway.
My father was overwhelmed by the generosity and kindness of a stranger, a man who had little to his name but who offered a hot cup of tea to a stranger shivering in the cold. While my father doesn’t know the shepherd’s name, he has never forgotten his act of kindness.
Hopefully, each of us has experienced this sort of unconditional kindness, the type that leaves an indelible mark on our soul. It doesn’t take much – a cup of tea, a smile, a kind word of encouragement.
In this season of celebrating Thanksgiving, I encourage you to pause, listen and remember when you, too, received “a cup of kindness.
And, I leave you with one reflection. I wonder what kind of world we would live in if we focused our days on offering each other a "cup of kindness."
With care and gratitude for the kindness you have brought into my life.
Tammy