Loving-Kindness in Action

I had the pleasure of delivering a homily at a wedding earlier this year. In it I spoke about Paul's words:

"Clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness, and patience."

These virtues are often dismissed as soft. They are anything but, rather they are the strength of a life shaped by Christ.

Kindness, for example, is one of the characteristics I find increasingly lacking in modern life, both at an individual and civic level.

Kindness shapes how you speak when you disagree.
How you listen when another is under pressure.
How you carry one another when life feels heavy.
What informs how you act towards others even when things are not easy.

As I prepare for our next preaching series starting in August, God Made Room, working through the book of Ruth– I keep encountering the Hebrew word hesed.

It is often translated as kindness, but that only captures part of its meaning. Hesed is a steadfast, covenant loyalty kind of loving-kindness. It is the type of kindness we are asked to express in faithful action, even when it is costly. 

Ruth is a story of that kind of sacrificial loving-kindness in action. Both Ruth and Boaz go well beyond what is normal or expected, taking considerable risks to care for someone in desperate need. They mirror, in small but beautiful ways, the loving-kindness God has shown us in Christ.

So how does kindness look in your life? Where are the places, and who are the people God is inviting you to treat with this kind of loving-kindness as modern-day retelling of His sacrificial love? 

How might we encourage those who lead us to govern in ways that not only keep order, but also embody kindness? Something I am thinking of in light of our current Grow Night series.

And where might God be asking you to make room for someone through an act of sacrificial kindness?

Colleen