Tough and Lasting Kindness
A retired pastor in our congregation often proclaimed, “God is so kind.” When Pastor Chuck died last year, my husband, Daryl, adopted the phrase as his own, a tribute to his mentor and friend.
“God is so kind,” he says, watching the plants in our garden beds sprout in the backyard, tucking our sons in, curling up in bed with a book at day’s end. “So kind.”
I agree, of course. I agreed with Chuck, and I agree with Daryl. Yet the phrase still struck me as sort of odd. For one thing, kindness is rarely at the top of anyone’s list of God’s important attributes. God is majestic, infinite, wise, merciful. We praise God’s justice, God’s grace, God’s creativity. God demands superlatives—the biggest, the strongest, the mightiest. In comparison, talking about God’s kindness seems like weak sauce.
We came to know Chuck only as he was dying of cancer and complications from Parkinson’s disease, fading just as we began to become familiar with him as a teacher, a guide, and a friend. It might make sense to celebrate God’s kindness while at a summer barbecue or after winning a raffle, but while dying of cancer? Really?
Yet even on his deathbed, Chuck would grasp the hands of his visitors and hoarsely whisper, “God is so kind. God has been so kind to me.”
John Milton, the great poet and hymn writer, once penned these lines:
Let us with a gladsome mind / Praise the Lord, for he is kind
And his mercies aye endure / Ever faithful, ever sure
If Chuck and Milton and Daryl—three men for whom I have deep regard—regularly proclaimed God’s kindness, surely I was missing something. Scripture speaks often of the kindness of the Lord. Ruth shows kindness to her mother-in-law, Naomi, following her to a foreign land with willingness and love. In Romans, Paul writes that God’s kindness is linked to forbearance and patience, intended to lead followers of Jesus to repentance (Romans 2:4 NIV). Kindness is a fruit of the Spirit, listed in Galatians 5:22–23 alongside patience and joy and love.
Theologian Stanley Hauerwas calls kindness “a great gift that comes through a recognition that I have time in this world to love another…So kindness is the touch that otherwise would not be there.”
Unlike niceness, which conjures images of glad-handing and polite small talk and never saying what we really mean, kindness has teeth. It pauses to see another person, to care for her, to give of ourselves to her. God is infinitely kind, reaching down continually to us to love and serve and save.
One of Scripture’s most beautiful pictures of kindness comes when David and his best friend, Jonathan, are parting ways. They suspect it may be for the last time, and indeed it is. In their aching farewell, Jonathan asks David for one thing: “‘Show me unfailing kindness like the Lord’s kindness as long as I live, so that I may not be killed, and do not ever cut off your kindness from my family’” (1 Samuel 20:14–15 NIV).
By the time King David is crowned, Jonathan has died, but David still keeps his promise. The first thing he does is seek out Jonathan’s disabled son, Mephibosheth, and extend this kindness to him. Mephibosheth did nothing to earn David’s favor and can’t possibly ever repay it, which makes his reception of David’s kindness such a beautiful picture of grace.
“‘You will always eat at my table,’” David tells him, setting his disfigured guest a place of high honor (2 Samuel 9:7 NIV).
The kindness of God doesn’t mean he will bless us with health or wealth or even comfort or ease. The way of Jesus centers on a bloody cross. Yet this is the kindness we need.
The kindness of Jesus goes far beyond a pat on the head or an encouraging word. He never tells us to “Buck up, little camper,” to just try harder to face down the day. No, God’s kindness is tough and lasting, the type that goes the extra mile, sets the place at the table, travels to the foreign land with the lonely widow, because that is the type of God we serve.
Niceness will never save us from sin; only a God who is kind enough to come and live and bleed and die among his people can do that, only a God who rises in glory so that we may one day too.
Let us continue to drink from the well of God’s tough and lasting kindness. And may that same kindness of Christ grow in us all.
writes and blogs at CourtneyBEllis.com. An author, speaker, and pastor, she lives with her husband and two littles in southern California. You can follow her on Facebook.
Photograph © Suhyeon Choi, used with permission
I once studied kindness and goodness as the fruits of the spirit. Why both? We regularly hear, even say, that God is good. And yes He is. Morally good. A goodness that he imparts to us. Kindness is juxtaposed against goodness because sometimes moral goodness can be unkind. Think the strict morality of the puritans. So kindness is important as it tempers what can come across as harsh. It strikes me that it is God’s kindness that draws people to repentance. Not His “goodness.” We have bothbfruit we to be morally good tempered by kindness to others. It will be our kindness that best reflects him.