I love kindness!! It sounds so soft and gentle, and yet it is one of the most powerful attributes that our God has. It is so close to love and often they are blended and we read of the Lord’s ‘loving kindness’. The psalmists sing and write about it over and over again in their psalms, even declaring that the Lord’s loving kindness is ‘better than life’, Psalm 63:3. In 1 Corinthians 13:4 we are told love is patient and kind, and that’s our God.
Paul notes the powerful part that God’s kindness plays in leading us to repentance, into relationship with Him, Romans 2:4, and we see how that works as we look at how Jesus touched the lives of those who were expecting anything but kindness from Him. People like the Samaritan woman at the well, who had had a few too many husbands, John 4:7-26, the woman caught in adultery John 8: 3-11, and Zaccheus, the social pariah. Luke 19:1-10,
Then there are all the unexpected acts of kindness that we see happening as He meets and mixes with people in all kinds of different circumstances. There’s the widow whose only son had just died. Luke 7:11-15, the making of about 160 gallons of wine to save a family’s reputation at a wedding, John 2:4-10, feeding a vast crowd at the end of a long day, Luke 9:14-17, making sure His mum was going to be cared for as He died, John 19:26,27, and choosing to appear first to a weeping Mary, in the garden after His resurrection, John 20:10-17.
As I read through the gospels it’s hard to choose these illustrations because there is just so much kindness coming from Jesus every day of His three years of ministry. Kindness just flowed from Jesus almost like He couldn’t stop being kind. Oh but wait! Of course! God’s heart is just full of kindness so He couldn’t. It’s who God is. Jesus said He had come to show us what the Father is like, to reveal the Father to us, saying to Philip ‘Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father’ John 14:9,
Jesus is our visual aid, (and more) into the kind heart of our Father God. The God who when Moses asked to see His glory spoke about ‘His goodness and loving kindness’ Exodus 33:18,19 AMP. So it is no surprise that one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit is ‘kindness’. Father Son and Holy Spirit are kind, and if the Spiritis flowing through us,kindness will be in evidence. Kind words and kind deeds.
As we thank the Lord for the kindness He has shown to us, and thank Him for all the kindness that we read of in the bible, we can expect kindness to flow from our inmost being too. Then we can also thank the Lord for every opportunity He gives us to let that same kindness flow from our hearts. Thanksgiving ‘primes the pump’ and lets the kindness flow to the ‘undeserving’, the difficult ones and the outcasts, as well as to our friends and family and those we love.
The fruit of the spirit that is kindness will make us like our heavenly Father, who is kind to ‘send rain on the righteous and the unrighteous’, Matthew 8:43-47. Kindness can even disarm and win the hardest of hearts, so let us thank Him for the opportunities to show kindness today and let it flow.
