Words that last a lifetime

Over at CNN, Bob Greene wrote an article on Sunday that touched my heart, about how the gracious words of a grocer during her childhood lasted in 80 year old Virginia Florey's memory for years. She and her friend Charlotte stopped into the grocery store every morning to buy a candy bar to split.

Charlotte and I would have a nickel, and we would buy a candy bar to split between us every morning. We would stand there in front of the man who owned the grocery and decide which kind to buy each day -- Butterfinger, or Milky Way, or Oh Henry!, or Hershey bar. We always talked about which one we wanted to spend our five cents on. We weren't very fast about it.

"And. . . ."

Here, Virginia Florey's voice grew almost wistful as she remembered it; here, almost 70 years later, you could hear the gratitude in her tone:

"He was never impatient with us. Never once."

Greene writes about the power of these words and memory, lasting despite all that happened over the years to Virginia. He calls them "small echoes of kindness" and posits that there are stories like that for many - words of encouragement, kindness or gentleness .

So I'm going to pause for a moment today and think about those moments in my own life, words that I recall when I need encouragement, kindness or gentleness in my life - gifts I've received from those who were spiritually generous.