“We all take our turn being ‘the least.’ And it doesn’t mean that we have less money or that people need to pity us. It just means that we are all in need of the Savior’s love.”
– Lindsey Stirling, Home for the Holidays (2020 Christmas Special)

I think this is the first time on my blog that I’ve ever straight-up quoted a real person. By that, I mean that every other quote I’ve ever shared, I believe, comes from a story, or a song, something that a real person is saying via a fictitious person. This, however, comes from something that Lindsey Stirling, world-famous hip-hop violinist and YouTube sensation, shared as part of a broadcast she put on just yesterday (at time of publication). I have to be honest, after the year we’ve all had, her broadcast was even more than just a breath of fresh air, because her music and her performances, they come from her very soul, and it is beautiful.

At this particular moment, Miss Stirling has just shared a story of her life experience, and how she came to understand something about what it means to be “the least of these, my brethren,” as Jesus speaks of it in the Bible. She had a moment where she was feeling very low, and the one who came and helped her up was a homeless man whom she had been kind to before. The world would see the homeless man as “the least,” but she realized that, right then, she was the one who was “the least,” and in need of the kindness that this man showed her.

Love, kindness, charity… these are things that we all need, from time to time, from each other and from the powers above. I know most people in the world don’t share my exact views on who or what that power is, but I think we can agree that it is made most manifest in our lives when the right person is in the right place at the right time to do or say exactly the right thing, the thing that we most need in order to make it through our lowest point, and on to better things.

No one is immune to those low moments, whether they be homeless people on the street or the kings of the world in their towers of metal and glass. And so everyone is in need of that love, both kindness received and charity given. It’s part of being human.

Charity is also what we most need to practice. It’s what the world needs most, especially in these trying, fearful times: love. After a year as divisive as this one, we need to, above all, show each other a little kindness.

A single act of kindness might seem like nothing, but it is, in fact, everything.