The Transforming Power of Kind Thoughts:

The Hidden Power of Kindness-by LOVASIK

Kind thoughts help you deal successfully with others.
As a mother's love draws the heart of her child like a powerful magnet, so, too, does the genuinely kind person wield the power to influence others for good. Only a kind person is able to judge another justly and to make allowances for his weaknesses. A kind eye, while recognizing defects, sees beyond them. Its gaze is like that of a gentle mother who judges her beloved child more leniently, and at the same time more correctly, than a stranger would.

No one ever saw human weakness more clearly than Jesus saw it in His apostles. Yet how patient He was with their worldliness, their faults! The wellspring of His patience was a kindness of heart that nothing could disturb. His followers clung to Him with an un­shakable confidence. Love radiated from His person and warmed the hearts of those surrounding Him. Nevertheless, on occasion He could show a firmness that nothing could weaken. Never did He waver or compromise when the glory of His Father or the sal­vation of souls was at stake.

Whenever your soul cherishes a gracious thought, it is as if God sees His own Being reflected in a silent, sacred likeness. A kind thought is like the image of the Savior in your soul. God beholds it and rejoices at it and blesses your soul because your thoughts and sentiments are so much after His own Heart.

Character is both formed and influenced in the world of your thoughts. If you are master in your thoughts, you are master... 1 John 3:14...everywhere. If you have learned to control your thoughts, you have yourself completely under control. If you have a kind heart, your words and deeds will also be kind. If you fostered more kind thoughts, you would necessarily be richer also in kind deeds. It must, therefore, be very important to cultivate kind thoughts.

Kind thoughts preserve you from many sins against charity.

The practice of kind thoughts has an effect on your spiritual life. It leads to self-denial. The practice of kind thoughts enables you to overcome criticism and all the influence it may exert on others. You thereby sacrifice successes at the moment they are within your reach. The triumph over a proud heart and a bitter temper is the result of difficult spiritual combat, but it brings its re­ward, for self-denial is a fountain of peace and joy in your soul.

The practice of kind thoughts is your main help to that com­plete control of the tongue without which all religion is vain, as St. James says.130 The interior beauty of your soul through habitual kindness of thought is greater than words can describe.
The practice of kind thoughts helps you to grow in the spiritual life. It opens and smooths the paths of prayer. It sheds a clear, still light over your self-knowledge and enables you to find God easily.Kind thoughts imply a contact with God and have a special power to let in upon you the light of God. They are the scent with which the creature is penetrated through the indwelling of the Creator.
Charity is the deepest view of life, because it is nearest to God's view. This is the reverse of a worldly and superficial view of things. God's view is not merely the truest view, but the only view that is true at all...'"James 1:26....

Thus, uncharitable judgments and prejudices, misun­derstandings and suspicions, envy and jealousy, and uncharitable words and slander will not take root in a soul that thinks kind thoughts. Aversions and bitterness disappear, strained relations are smoothed out, and petty arguments end of themselves.

If you were to make it a practice to begin each day with benev­olent thoughts in your heart, instead of selfish ambition, you would not be inclined to deny a helping hand or ignore a favor rendered you.

You would certainly be disposed to spare the feelings of oversensitive persons, to sympathize with the suffering, and to help others in the solution of vexing problems confronting them. If, instead of harsh thoughts and bitter resentment, you fostered in your heart a readiness to forgive and forget, you would not find it too difficult to adopt a friendly attitude toward those who are ha­bitually cold and hostile toward you.

To keep firmly to supernatural principles in your daily conduct is not easy. It takes great willpower to master thoughts of hatred, selfishness, and mistrust that rush in upon you and to turn them into gracious and kind thoughts. You need God's grace and much self-discipline to realize the ideal expressed in the words of St. Paul: "Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, com­passion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, and patience."13
Get into the habit of putting a kind interpretation on all you see and hear, and of having kind thoughts of everyone of whom you think. This will enable you to live a new life in a new world.

Compare it to your state in Heaven someday. One very impor­tant feature of Heaven will be the absence of all bitterness and criticism and the possession of thoughts of the most tender kind­ness. Thus, by cultivating kind thoughts, you are in a very special way preparing for Heaven. You are actually earning Heaven. By God's grace, you are imitating in your own mind that upon which, in the Divine Mind, you rest all your hopes — merciful judg­ments, favorable interpretations, thoughts of kindness, and tolerant compassion.

Kind thoughts imply a great deal of thinking about others ac­cording to a divine ideal — the ideal of charity. By sweetening the fountains of your thoughts, you destroy the bitterness of your judg­ments. And if you are habitually kind in thought through super­natural motives, you are far on the way to becoming a saint....Col. 3:12. 132 Phil. 4:7. 133 Matt. 5:9.