From The God of Miracles:

Kindness is a spark that reflects God’s Light while hate and discord engulf us in an actual darkness.

When we’re kind, joy begins to creep into our being, and then to pervade it.

Our bodies and emotions are both healthier. Our cells react to kindness and are often healed of sickness. Amiability is wishing another well, and so it is a blessing. We receive blessings in return. As one writer noted, kindness drives gloom and darkness from our souls and replaces it with hope. It glorifies, it ennobles, it purifies. It beautifies us. We actually look better. Ennoble is to increase dignity. It builds up. It summons grace, where discouragement resists those gifts that God has in store for us.

Is contention, is criticality, really worth it, or does it only drain your peace?

Kindness opens a portal to the hereafter and through that portal comes the surprise of serendipity. [scroll for more:]

Angels watch our every move and celebrate when we perform an act of goodness. When we need them, they speed on the highway that our love has paved.

Kindness is potent because it is active love.

One kind word, one kind smile, one gesture, is often enough to serve as a catalyst.

We don’t see it, but the world around us changes.

The legend goes of a stranger who sought shelter for the night and was tossed out when he uttered God’s Name in vain. In the morning, an angel appeared to the innkeeper, exclaiming, “I sent a stranger to you for shelter. Where is he?” When the innkeeper explained what happened, the angel replied: “For forty years God has been patient with that man. For one single night could you not bear with him?”

Patience and forbearance are the stuff of angels and the stuff of miracles. Think of all the times your guardian has stood by you despite your conduct. The Book of Proverbs tells us that “a patient man is better than a warrior, and he who rules his temper, than he who takes a city.”

This forbearance leads to the grace of knowing ourselves more intimately, and brings about a housecleaning.

It is an exercise in discipline, and discipline strengthens the Spirit. With discipline you can control your emotions and reorient your thoughts. Discipline is like the side of a river. Without its banks, a river becomes a swamp. It obumbrates.

Control—in every aspect of your life—keeps chaos in check and opens the way, especially during the Christmas season, to miracles.

[resources: The God of Miracles]