In high school, I became a vegetarian and avoided eating meat for a number of years. I often skipped school lunches since they usually featured a main dish that included meat. And I only took the time to pack a lunch once in a while. By the end of most school days, I’d feel famished, sometimes having eaten nothing since breakfast. On the afternoons when marching band practice followed a full school day, I could barely wait for rehearsal to finish so I could go home and scrounge up a snack.
My friend Tracy also marched in the school band, and she had a free period at the end of the day. So, Tracy had time to go to her own house between classes and band practice. Sometimes, she microwaved a cheese pizza while she was home and then brought me a slice when she came back to school for rehearsal. Every time I saw Tracy approach me carrying her baton in one hand and a triangle wrapped in aluminum foil in the other, I was overjoyed! Even though I wasn’t actually perishing, in that moment I felt rescued from starvation by Tracy’s kindness.
In Colossians 3:12-14, the apostle Paul urges the Christians in Colossae to clothe themselves with compassion and kindness, among other virtues. And these virtues don’t come from us. Rather, because we belong to Jesus, we are able to love others because God’s love overflows from us. God showed us the ultimate kindness. He rescued us, people who were perishing, by giving His own life for ours. Jesus died on the cross and rose from the dead to forgive us and restore us to relationship with God.
If we’ve put our trust in Jesus, the Holy Spirit is in us—transforming us and making us new. As new creations, we possess God’s power to clothe ourselves in attitudes and actions that flow from a heart transformed by Jesus Christ. This is what my friend Tracy did. She was not just a classmate but also a sister in Christ, and she put on kindness toward me by sharing that delicious, meat-free pizza on a handful of afternoons. • Allison Wilson Lee
• Can you think of a time someone was kind to you? What did they do?
• How might remembering Jesus’s kindness to us help us be kind to others?
“So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.†Matthew 7:12 (NIV)
Read Verses:
Eph.2.1-Eph.2.10|1Pet.5.6-1Pet.5.11
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