A little over a week ago, on an otherwise unpreposessing Monday, I opened my email inbox to find a wholly unexpected gift card for a book.

If you know me at all, you know that books are some of my very favorite things in the world. Even better than chocolate. (Heresy, I know). Sometimes even better than my kids. (Shhh. Don’t tell them I said that. Though of course I love my kids, sometimes it takes a good book to revive me enough to return to the parenting fray).

My morning immediately took a turn for the better, and I spent the rest of the day musing over the perks of an unexpected kindness. There’s something wonderfully validating about finding yourself in someone’s thoughts, for no reason other than that they care about you.

A month or so ago, a different friend, knowing that I was struggling with some anxiety and insecurity about a massive project I was working on, left a package of chocolate at my doorstep. The chocolate was great, but the fact of the gift was better: I felt, all unsought, loved and remembered.

As a church we place a lot of emphasis on service, and rightly so: we build and bond our communities and families through service. But often these kindnesses are looked for, the result of a sign-up sheet passed around Relief Society or Elder’s Quorum. This doesn’t rob them of their worth, only, perhaps, some of the prick of delight from something unexpected.

I think God is particularly good at these unlooked-for kindnesses, the tender mercies we run up against when we think we’ve run aground, the unexpected fire of a sunset in between errands that stops our breath. As Annie Dillard writes in Pilgrim at Tinker Creek,

The world is fairly studded and strewn with pennies cast broadside by a generous hand. But- and this is the point- who gets excited by a mere penny? But if you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.

These pennies are moments of gratuitous beauty: sometimes nature, but sometimes also unnecessary kindnesses that still make the world a little more lovely.

It’s easy (especially now that school is starting) to get caught up in the rush of day-to-day life. But hope to make a better effort at spreading unlooked-for kindness.

What unlooked-for kindnesses have you experienced recently? What kindnesses have you spread?