“Be kind to one another …”
Ephesians 4:30. And the little girl prayed: “O Lord,
make all the bad people good and all the good people kind.”
Kindness is the most attractive human virtue.
Other virtues are necessary where people share time and place
– patience, courage, sympathy, sincerity and honesty
are essentials for those who would live usefully and happily
with family, friends and neighbours. They make us appreciated
and respected by others. But they are lesser in value to kindness
for they may have little or no genuineness about them. The
kind hearted are of all classes, colours and creeds; rich
and poor; young and old; saints and sinners; educated and
illiterate. They feel deeply for those who need help and they
respond practically and effectively and their kindness is
often appreciated and sometimes reciprocated. And their kindnesses
are often anonymous. Kindness in the home is the showing of
that love and respect that binds families together in caring
for and sharing with one another. And that in spite of misunderstandings
and disagreements for husbands and wives and young people
do get on one another’s nerves at times.
We know of that domestic violence of tongue and hand which
tears families apart, injures and destroys people.
To avoid such situations people must be kind to one another,
for kindness generally gets a like response. Kindness, though,
is giving whatever is needed without thought of reward.
Kindness is for the home, work, play and in the community.
Life is not made up with great deeds and sacrifices only but
by people doing ordinary kindnesses.
“Since trifles make the sum of human
things, and half our misery from our foibles springs; Since
life’s best joys consist in peace and ease, And few can
save or serve, but all may please; Oh let the ungentle spirit
learn from hence, A small unkindness is a great offence, Large
bounties to restore we wish in vain, But all may shun the
guilt of giving pain.”
Hannah Moore.
Good neighbourliness is integral to a caring community. It
has been the one thing different between the modern urban
and rural communities. Country people knew one another and
were kind to each other. In towns and cities neighbouring
is little known because people do not have or want to have,
close relationships near at hand. But the need to secure one’s
privacy should never exclude kindness and care for others.
“That last portion of a good man’s
life, His little, nameless, unremembered acts of tenderness
and love.”
William Wordsworth.
Kindly relations, people with people, is desirable in a good
society. It is to be expected among Christians so that it
is recognised to be entirely out of place and character when
they are unkind to one another.
There can be no greater indictment on the Churches than that
they allow their differences to separate Christians from Christians.
Not separateness but togetherness was the prayer of Jesus
for those who followed Him. Kindness was personified in Him
and in his treatment of everyone. It is a characteristic of
the Christian who takes his faith seriously.
There are these simple rules of behaviour – that we
do and say nothing unkind to anyone; that we never hurt anyone
by how we treat them; that if we can’t say something
good about someone we say nothing.
The kind are like Jesus, they lift people up. The unkind
are unlike Him, they put people down.
“Be kind to one another.”
F.W. Faber reminds us: “For the love of God is broader
than the measure of man’s mind, and the heart of the
eternal is most wonderfully kind.”
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