Words from WW Blog

Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. (1 John 3:18)

As a culture, we seem to be addicted to nice sayings. They are meant to be guides, cheers, directives, but too often they are simply words that become part of the scenery.

In recent times we seem to be encouraged ad-nauseum to “Be kind!” It’s on school marquees, t-shirts, the subject of TV commercials, and ad campaigns. Nice words. It includes an active verb that most of us hope can be said in describing our personality and life.

But our “kind words” frequently do not translate into kind actions. Internationally, there are situations happening that are based on hatred. Examples of genocide, the massacring of villages, bombings and suicide bombers. The world is not a kind place.

But that’s the world! We’re the church! We’re followers of Jesus!

Quite honestly, the church, more often times than not, is a place where people are encouraged to be nice, that has no relevance to how they treat others after they leave the building. In the words, followers of Jesus tend to hear the words and neglect the actions. It’s knowing the words, but forgetting what they mean. It’s memorizing the instruction manual and then putting it in the desk drawer. It’s Barney Fife sitting on Andy Taylor’s front porch and saying, “You know what I’m going to do. I’m going to go get me a bottle of pop, go over to Thelma Lou’s, and watch a little TV…Yep, that’s what I’m going to do…go get a bottle of pop, go over to Thelma Lou’s, and watch a little TV.” And he continues to sit in the front porch chair.

Our kids are being told “Be Kind!”, but they’re seeing that fistfights between adults at sporting contests have multiplied. They’re being told to show kindness, but they see Congress acting like two tag teams of wrestlers, always looking to “put a hurtin'” on the other side.

They see the words, but not the follow-through actions. When there is a heightened sense of entitlement in a society, kindness becomes a charity event where cocktails are served and society page pictures are snapped.

The hope is that being kind is an action that doesn’t need to be preached and marqueed, but rather is the spontaneous reaction to sensing a need. For the follower of Jesus, it is literally following in His footsteps and doing what He would have done…a touch on a wounded soul, lending an ear to a tormented widow, providing food for a hungry crowd, healing an outcast.

Being kind is not something I need to be instructed to do. If I am a reflection of Jesus, it is who I am.

And when I fall short, I confess my errors to God, ask forgiveness, and pray that my actions reflect Jesus in the next opportunity that I encounter.

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This entry was posted on October 21, 2023 at 1:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. You can comment below, or link to this permanent URL from your own site.