“The best portion of a good man’s life is his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and of love.”
-William Wordsworth

Okay, love these words. As I reflected on them, at one point I got tripped on the “unremembered”. After all, wouldn’t I find it joyful to look back and remember the selfless acts I have done…not to boast upon them, but to find comfort and encouragement? Not to hold up a list before Our Father, but to remind myself of His Spirit within me?

Then, I thought to myself, I’m missing the point.

What if the point isn’t to forget, but to live a life so full of acts of kindness and love that they seem to run into each other and become one, inseparable? It isn’t about the kindness extended to this friend or that, or even the unnamed random stranger. The things we do, the people to whom we extend God love do not loose their importance or value without names. They are still roses. The glory brought to God is not tarnished or forgotten.

As humans we seem to have propensity to name and label things. These identifies help us to identify, relate, navigate, categorize…remember. So many people and places and roads and things. Hard to imagine life without them. And yet…

“What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet.”
–William Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet, Act II. Scene II

Today, in the journeys which unfold for you and I, let us find joy not in individual moments we can label and remember. Let us find our joy in the closing hours of today, when Our Father whispers “Well done, good and faithful servant.”