Week Two: Love is Kind

What is kindness exactly? Is it just being a nice person?

I’m not inherently nice. I don’t want to be mean, I just don’t understand the whole “polite” thing. Why add fluffy words to sentences just to make them sound better? Let’s just all say what we mean.  Wouldn’t that make the world a better place?

I can not lie. It’s not like I’m completely unable to, I’ve just found that if you lie, you have to have a good memory. You have to remember your lie, and then possibly lie some more to cover it up. I don’t have a good memory, and I have no interest in trying to remember all the lies I told. So I prefer to be honest. It comes very naturally to me. Because of this, I’ve had a struggle all my life with the idea that being nice is actually being fake, it’s sort of like a lie, right? It’s something that we add to our sentences because it makes people feel better. “Pass me the ketchup” is what I’m thinking. But what I have to say is, “Sweety, would you please pass me that ketchup?” Isn’t it just a waste of time to add all those unnecessary words in there? Get to the point!

I’m also the youngest of 4 children, in a family where everyone had an opinion and expressed it loudly. I learned that if I want to speak, I have to speak precisely and quickly. There was no time for niceties. Yet the older I get, the more I realize “you catch more bees with honey.”  (I’m not sure why anyone would want to catch bees exactly, I usually want them as far away from me as possible. But I understand the idea.) When I smile and look people in the eye and tell them to have a nice day, I generally get treated better. Now that I have kids, I also want my kids to speak to me nicely even if they don’t mean it. So I’m starting to understand. I can be nicer. But is that what God means when he says, “Love is kind”? I’m not sure that’s the fullness of it.

The dictionary defines it like this: having or showing a friendly, generous, and considerate nature. That sounds nice.

Friendly. Generous. Considerate. In other words, loving. This is so cool: “having or showing”. So people should be able to see it. Because it shows. That’s the whole point of this love thing in the first place.

Someone spoke at church yesterday about their week in patience. He explained that in order to be patient, he had to ignore someone at work. He literally didn’t talk to them or interact with them. He ended up being way more patient with them! But not really, right? He realizes that ignoring people in order to be patient with them is not exactly loving them.

Showing. I realize kindness is different from patience, but wouldn’t it be great if we could love so much that is showed? So that we didn’t avoid people or situations in order to love them, but that we loved so much that our patience and kindness for them would just show?

That would be cool.  And I’m pretty sure that’s what Jesus wants us to do.

I’ll look up the Greek word for ‘kind’ and try to get some more meaning later. But this is a good start for me since I have a long way to go in showing kindness.

Remember, it’s Christ in me that will bring this forth. I’m not going to be fake in my kindness, I actually love people, so I actually want to show them that love. And part of that love is being kind. So it should start coming naturally, if I die to myself and let Christ live in me. Right?

And don't forget to keep walking in patience.