Clothe Yourselves With Kindness
Scripture Reading — Titus 3:3-8
As God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with … kindness …
Colossians 3:12
Paul reminded Titus that at one time they were foolish and ungodly—“disobedient, deceived and enslaved by all kinds of passions and pleasures.” Ouch! That was probably a painful reminder. Paul also would have insisted that we are included in that description too!
But then “the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared,” and now through God’s power and because of Jesus, we can be transformed!
God does the unexpected. He comes to us with kindness and love, for he is “God our Savior,” who “saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.”
The German philosopher Nietzsche hated Christianity because it encouraged kindness. He rejected the biblical concept of love because, he said, it drained strong people by making them kind, driving them to waste their energies on lepers, cripples, and oppressed people.
How thankful we can be that God comes to us with kindness in his heart and in his hands. We need a God who is kind.
What’s more, our nations, our communities, and our families constantly need people who are willing to “waste their energy” by being kind.
Let’s see how many people we can be kind to today.
Gracious God, may your kindness gladden our hearts and soften our words and so be an unexpected gift to people today. In the name of our kind Savior we pray. Amen.
About the author — Harvey Stob
Rev. Harvey Stob and his wife, Audrey, served as missionaries in Argentina for eleven years. They then served churches in Cincinnati, Ohio; Ridgewood, New Jersey; and Ann Arbor, Michigan. Harvey retired from full-time pastoral work in 2009. He and Audrey have three children and seven grandchildren.
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