Growing Together – Day 16: Kindness
READ: Ephesians 4:32 - Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.
REFLECT: As we mentioned with Patience – each of these fruit have their origin in God. We see them first in God. They are His attributes which get built in us by His Spirit. Kindness is no different. However, I feel like “Kind” might be a bit of a controversial word.
In our most zealous expressions of Christianity, we are very comfortable saying (with John the Apostle) that God is love, but we might hesitate to say that God is kind. “Kind” sounds too soft to our ears, too grandfatherly, and too abuse-able. We like “love” because we have a category in our heads for “tough love,” but we have no category for “tough kindness.” Kindness is just kind.
If patience is having a long-temper toward those who hurt us, kindness is the proactive side of that coin. Kindness is the “do unto others as you would have them do to you (regardless of wrongs).”
Be generous when you have no reason to be,
be thoughtful when you have nothing to gain,
be respectful even if they’re not old,
be an ally from the start, and
be a blessing they don’t see coming.
WATCH: