“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience” (Colossians 3:12 NIV).
Have you noticed how course and sarcastic our culture has become? We’re convinced that we have to be thick-skinned and savvy to survive these days.
Or do we? Is it possible that there is a different kind of clothing that we can wear in this rough culture of ours?
Remember when you were younger and sarcasm made no sense (For some, it still doesn’t.)? Most of us figured out the humor of sarcasm when we were in middle school. This, after we had endured several raucous occasions where everyone laughed but us, only to realize the laugh was on us. Children don’t understand satire. They’re too kind.
And speaking of children and kindness, is that where we lost ours? Did we outgrow kindness like a piece of kid’s clothing?
Kindness is an underrated trait these days, but the Bible says that it’s one of the marks of the fruit of the Spirit. Perhaps kindness is one of the traits that Jesus so admired in the children he welcomed on his lap. He appreciated their simple faith and kind manner.
Kindness and manners go together you know. At least, that’s what my mother taught me. When a clerk at a store showed poor customer service or a person was gruff with a child, she would whisper under her breath, “Now, that was ill-mannered. I guess she never learned better.”
You can tell a lot about a person in the way they treat a child, or the way they treat someone who is childlike (as in the least of these). If they are rough and haughty, they have not put on kindness. They do not possess the fruit of the Spirit.
Kindness may have been relegated to the kid’s clothing section these days, but I think we should look and see if we can’t find it in our size again.