Hello my friends 🙂 I hope you are well. I have been spending the past few weeks celebrating remarkable milestones in the lives of some of my good friends & family and I am glad to be back and continue the blog posts on “Kindness” 🙂 . As always, I am glad that you take time to read the blog, share with others and give feedback. God bless you & continue to communicate questions, concerns, clarifications etc and lets keep this engaging discourse going. Amen
2. KINDNESS FROM A MERCY PERSPECTIVE
A few weeks ago, I blogged on “kindness from a philanthropy perspective” explaining that philanthropic acts are good; in fact scripture encourages them: giving to the poor, defending the helpless, donating to a legitimate cause etc and I’m sure all of us have engaged in such acts on some level. That’s wonderful and your reward is sure. Now let’s bring this “kindness talk” to our everyday relationships with our immediate circles: an undeserving friend, a mean co-worker, an annoying relative, a hard teacher, a controversial leader, a friend/relative of an enemy, a person who “rightfully deserves” harsh treatment from you for one reason or another etc. If we would all be honest with ourselves, we would acknowledge that we are often presented with such situations. Just pause and think about current situations you are facing in which it’s just hard for you to extend kindness. Or let me give you a classic story from 2 Sam 9:1-3
This is the story of David, Saul and his son Jonathan. Saul hated David and wanted him dead (1 Sam. 24:3, 2 Sam. 26:2). Why? Because David was eventually going to be King over Israel but Saul just couldn’t stand to see David rise to fulfill his destiny as the anointed and chosen one. So Saul gathered 3,000 men to go ambush David and he failed. In fact, scripture says God caused a deep sleep to fall on them so that they were unable to carry out their evil assignment (1 Sam. 26:12). Upon finding them all asleep, David could have easily revenged by killing them. But he said he would not shed the blood of God’s anointed because the Lord himself will take Saul out in a time to come. See, when there is no evil or treason in your heart, you live freely and the schemes of the enemy have no chance at you. The Lord fights for you as you allow him to be your judge. He releases divine help, wisdom and strategy for you to overcome your enemies. And God did that for David. He brought him Jonathan (Saul’s son). And Jonathan loved David so much that he made a covenant to help David escape the evil of his own father Saul; but he asked David to remember him (Jonathan).
He essentially told David “Please be kind to my house especially after God has rescued you from your enemies” ( 1 Sam 20:15)
This is like saying “Please be kind to our family especially after God has rescued you from my father- the very person who wants to kill you“
Ridiculous right?
Well later, it happened that both Jonathan and his father, Saul died in war and then David was anointed king by the men of the city ( 2 Sam 1& 2 Sam 2:4) Again, this would have been a perfect opportunity for David to say:
“ O well, Saul was wicked to me and his son- Jonathan- who helped me is dead too so technically I can get away without showing any kindness to their family. After all, I am now in a position of power, authority and influence“. Some folks are waiting to be promoted to a place of power just so they can revenge and retaliate. If that is your mission in life, then ask holy spirit to relieve you of this misguided thinking today because it is not a fruit of the spirit and does not glorify Christ in any way. Let the Lord handle your case and recompense you fully. Trust me, its the best deal you can get from a good father.
David indeed decided to show kindness to Saul’s house for Jonathan’s sake by inviting Mephiboshet to table and giving him all that belonged to Saul. He could have easily decided to be led by his fickle emotions and say “Saul did me bad. I am still very hurt; so hurt that I will even forgo my covenant with Jonathan” but instead, he was governed by kindness and allowed himself to be healed emotionally and refused to be held hostage by the evil meted out to him in the past by Saul.
The GOOD NEWS for you today is this: Holy Spirit can help you do that in this season as you lean on him and train yourself by reason of use of every experience to develop the fruit of the spirit.
How about when the circumstances are prime for you to avoid being kind? Godwilling by Friday, I am going to release the rest of this blog
Have a blessed wednesday. Stay empowered and cultivate the seed of kindness that is in you. Your Reward is For sure amen. As always, please feel free to share on 🙂
R.
PillBox 