Kindness

Love is patient, love is kind… 1 Corinthians 13:4

I knew a man once who worked as a chaplain at the local hospital. In the children’s ward he was known as “the kind man”.

When I heard that I simply smiled: I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful description for anybody, and I have since come to the conclusion that “kind” is one of the most beautiful words in the English language. It is such a quiet, unpretentious, unassuming word, yet so meaningful too. Oh for more kindness in our angry, arguing, jealous, vengeful, spiteful, hard-hearted world!

It's no accident that this word appears in Paul’s two great lists in the New Testament.

In his celebration of love (1 Corinthians 13) it’s right there at the start: “Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs…”

And there it is again in his catalogue of the “fruit”, or harvest, of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-24): “the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control”.

How can we define kindness?

One way is to look at all the things Paul says love isn’t in 1 Corinthians 13: it’s not jealous, boastful or arrogant; not contemptuous of others or self-seeking, not easily angered, no harbourer of grudges…

Putting it positively, you could just tip various qualities such as gentleness, consideration, thoughtfulness, humility, helpfulness, good humour, pleasantness, good-heartedness, into a big pot, stir thoroughly, and - hey presto, there you have kindness. Kindness is all the things you instinctively like other people to be, even when you fall short yourself. It may not be easy to pin it down precisely, but you know it when you see it – oh, how you know it when you see it!

You could also, of course, reflect on stories of kindness in the Bible: Joseph was kind to his brothers (Genesis 50:21), Boaz to Ruth (Ruth 2-3), the Roman centurion Julius to the prisoner Paul (Acts 27:3).These examples show that being kind is more than just “being a nice person”; real resolve and sacrifice may be required.

And when it comes to Jesus – well, where do you start? He reached out his hands to touch people with leprosy; he wept at the tomb of Lazarus and over the doomed city of Jerusalem; he stopped a funeral procession and restored a dead man to his weeping mother (“his heart went out to her”, Luke 7:13); he prayed on the cross for those who were torturing him to death.

Never mind where you start – where do you stop!

Dictionaries of quotations can yield rich fruit. I’ve been rummaging about, and here are a few results. They may not all be absolutely true, but they have certainly given me things to think about, which I hope might make me a better person. I hope you might find them thought-provoking too…

Kind words are the music of the world. They have a power which seems to be beyond natural causes, as though they were some angel’s song which had lost its way and come to earth.

Kindness has converted more sinners than zeal, eloquence and learning. (Both F W Faber)

Kindness spoken here. (Sign in a shop window)

Be kind; everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. (John Watson)

That best portion of a good man’s life - /His little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love. (William Wordsworth)

All worldly joys go less/ To the one joy of doing kindnesses. (Gorge Herbert)

Getting money is not all a man’s business: to cultivate kindness is a valuable part of the business of life.

Kindness is in our power, but fondness is not. (Both Samuel Johnson)

Hey, am I getting sentimental! I hope not (if you know me you will know that that would be against my nature)!

No, we must of course recognise that being a true follower of Jesus requires us to face up to, and sometimes confront, ugly and hard things. Kindness isn’t mushy and gloopy, fronted by a plastic smile. But a reminder of the call to be kind can do most of us, I suspect, little harm.

Lady Macbeth rebuked her husband for being “too full o’ the milk of human kindness”. Mmm. Is that possible, do you think? Can you ever have too much of such a beautiful thing as kindness? I rather doubt it.

And if we aren’t sure about that, well, we know what happened to Lady Macbeth, don’t we? (Don’t we?)

Gracious Father, take away from me all hardness and indifference, and fill me with the lovely kindness of Jesus. Amen.