By any standard, our world, our country, and our lives are filled with enormous challenges and difficulties - elephant size problems. In my world of the church, many Christians struggle with how believers in Jesus can support people and causes that seem so antithetical to what Jesus taught and how he told his followers to live. I struggled in my own life and ministry to reconcile my heart with my message and the message of the organizations I have loved and served.

 

I don't have a large platform. I don't speak into politics from my pulpit or my public speaking and consulting. Yet, I feel I need to do something. And, I need to encourage others to do what they can, in the worlds they live in.

 

I wrestled with how I am to share this passion growing in me and how I am to practice it myself. That was when the message came to me - wash the elephant. I am able to do my part, to make a difference where I am. I can't clean up the whole mess, but I can wash the part in front of me. And, I can help others do there part as well. 

 

Practicing Kindness in an age of incivility is something all of us can do. We can do it online and in person. We can be kind to friends and strangers. Kindness crosses the aisle, the border, the boundaries.

 

Christians like to talk about loving others. Great. Go ahead. Try loving someone in line at Starbucks. Do it wrong and you may get arrested! Do it right, and it will probably look like an act of kindness. There are bigger, more significant, higher impact things to be done. I just want us to get started by doing something all of us can do right now.

 

Maybe together, we can have a more significant impact than we imagine.