If you know a life that is dreary, that seems utterly desolate and alone, do what you can to get a bit of bloom planted in it. –
Upper Currents
Jesus never gave money to anyone in need, so far as we are told. He did not pay rents for the poor, nor buy them food or clothes, but he was always doing good in ways that meant far more to them than if he had helped with money. There are needs that only love and kindness can meet. Countless people move about among us these days starving for love, dying for loneliness. You can help them immeasurably by becoming their friend, not in any marked or unusual way, but by dong them a simple kindness, by showing a little human interest in them, by turning aside to do a little favour, by manifesting sympathy, if they are in sorrow. A little note of a few lines sent to a neighbour in grief has been known to start an influence of comfort and strength that could not be measured.
It is the little things of love that count in such ministry – the little nameless acts, the small words of gentleness, and the looks that tell of interest and care and sympathy. Life is hard for many people and nothing is more needed continually than encouragement and cheer. There are men who never do anything great in their lives, and yet they make it sunnier all about them and make all who know them happier, braver, and stronger. There are women, overburdened themselves, perhaps, but so thoughtful, so sympathetic, so obliging, so full of little kindnesses, that they make the spot of the world in which they live more like heaven. –
Comfort Through Personal Helpfulness, in The Book of Comfort