Thought for the day

We need to imitate Christ and when we look to Jesus we can see how gentle he is with us. We do not get what we deserve as He is compassionate and slow to anger. He is gentle and mild and so should we be. We need to be sensitive to the needs of others and true kindness seeks to do good to other people in a gentle and mild way.
James Montgomery Boice writes, “Another stand out fact about Jesus’ kindness is that He was kind to people who did not deserve it. In fact the reality is that He is kind to us and we don’t deserve it in any form or fashion. We need to express that same kindness to people in our world that don’t deserve it.”
The real test comes when we are faced with being kind to people who have wronged us. Does this give us the right to be unkind to them and in fact give them back what they deserve? Sometimes our very actions would answer that question as a resounding “Yes”. In fact we feel entitled to hit back in a manner that would give them what they “deserve”. However that is not the way God responds to us and we need to imitate that behaviour and be kind to those who harm us.
The woman caught in adultery had committed a terrible sin. The soldiers had mocked Jesus. They were exceedingly cruel to Him. They had put a crown of thorns on His head. They had blindfolded Him, hit Him and asked if He could tell which one of them it was. The criminal on the cross had mocked Jesus with the rest. Yet to every one of them Jesus was kind. He was kind without hesitation. Luke 6:35 tells us that God, “is kind to the ungrateful and wicked.”

Erick Bouwmeester
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