Kindness

Ephesians 1:7-8

     "⁷ He is so rich in kindness and grace that he purchased our freedom with the blood of his Son and forgave our sins. ⁸ He has showered his kindness on us, along with all wisdom and understanding."

Kindness is a word that gets thrown around a lot today; but what does it mean? I looked at my trusty dictionary.com and the only definition they had listed that did not use the word kindness IN the definition was: friendly feeling; liking. So I thought that I would look for a few synonyms for the word. Here is what I came up with.

—Synonyms
1, 3. benignity, benevolence, humanity, generosity, charity, sympathy, compassion, tenderness. Now these are some words that I can sink my teeth into! Humanity, generosity, compassion and tenderness, all words that describe Jesus' ministries here on Earth.


As Christians we are called to be like Jesus, to be "Christ like", so to add kindness to the list of Fruits of the Spirit makes sense to me. My verse at the top states God was "so full of kindness and grace...", these two words go together well in my book. I was given a word picture for grace once, to sign "grace" you make the sign for the letter "g" over your heart (the sign for "guilt"), and then flip that sign upside down. It was said to me like this, Grace is guilt turned upside down. That has always stuck in my head, God took our guilt and turned it upside down and made it grace. What does that have to do with kindness? Well, I feel God's kindness is what gave us that grace.

Psalm 145:17 says it this way "The Lord is righteous in everything he does; he is filled with kindness." Kindness towards us. Kindness that sent His only Son to the Cross to bear our sins for us, kindness that would send us the Holy Spirit to lead, guide and even "speak" for us when we are unable to, kindness that has reached across generations and hit me square in the heart. You know, looking back at my life since I moved out to Oklahoma, I see a lot of God's kindness to me that was hidden in trying times. When we first moved here, I couldn't find a job to save my life, but God had a kindness in store, He had an Applebee's just waiting to open and hire me. As I worked my tail off (literally!) at the Bee's, and knew I needed something that paid better...God sent another gift, in the form of a favorite patron of mine at Applebee's who wanted to recruit me to work for them. And the gifts just keep coming folks! I'm thankful for learning all of the hard lessons that God had for me to learn, but He never once left me alone. His kindness and mercy follows/ed me all the days of my life! I know he has a lot more kindness just waiting to shower down on me, and I pray that when that kindness comes, I'll have left my umbrella at home!