Loving Kindness

There are wonderful verses from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians that have been speaking to me these past few months. I think that finding them was as much the result of a deep search on my part as it was a relentless voice of God tickling my ears on His part. No surprise there. It’s just that I have been struggling with this growing feeling that our world is in a battle to define life as either a place where goodness and loving kindness still exists or a place where only suspicion and hatred determine who and what we are.

Ephesians 2:4-7 But God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which he loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you have been saved – and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the ages to come he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.

Loving kindness is translated from the Hebrew word Hesed. The emphasis is the unending and compassionate devotion from God to humanity. This may be where the difficulty lies. Our world seems to be a place where it is increasingly difficult to find love and compassion for others, especially where the “other” is different from us. The lines between who is and who is not to be loved or cared for seem to be getting more concretely defined. It seems that we are more aware of our differences than we have been in the past, primarily because our world is undoubtedly smaller than ever before. I can, at the click of my laptop, discover all sorts of information about almost any subject. I can read about most any country, culture and topic. Is it possible that we feed our individuality instead of embracing our diversity?

The reasons for showing and reflecting the loving kindness given to us by God, has not necessarily translated into a more compassionate approach to our lives. I am not certain that I know what the answer is, nor am I certain what the questions are. All that I know is that I don’t like who I become when loving and kindness is not my go-to response to life. When protectionism becomes my new “normal.” I seem to be learning more from the way of the world around me than from the grace and love that I learned and embraced from my youth. I fear that I have become more jaded from this exercise in humanity and dare not speculate on what the future holds if that is true.

A step forward? What can I do? In almost every instance where things have gone awry in the biblical story, the first step forward is a confession. Knowing what to do always begins by realizing that something is not right. It also requires me to take stock of my involvement and complicity in the situation. If loving kindness is the issue, then probably I have not been loving or kind. Our world and existence are greater than one person and yet are built of all the personal individual parts of each person. Complex, and still individually created and maintained. My point at this moment is that I feel compelled to make an effort to seek loving and kindness as my response. Built from God’s loving kindness toward me gives me hope that success is, in fact, possible. I am holding on to that and moving with a lighter heart and a faith that trusts that God can accomplish the good that I can only hope to embody and embrace.

Thanks be to God!