“Friendly people are caring people, eager to provide encouragement and support when needed most.”
Rosabeth Moss Kanter
Whatever you do, check on your strong friends, they need gentleness and reassurance too. I do not care how strong you are, what experiences you encountered, or the difficulties you face.
Everyone needs someone, some time.
Throughout this week, I have been experiencing printer issues. I am a high school English teacher and my students are taking a quiz, today. After asking for assistance from my dad, I sat in his office chair, waiting patiently for my printer request to go through. The sun gradually hid underneath the horizon and a pale blue light made its presence known in the sunroom. I looked around the office, when I noticed a book underneath my laptop. It read:
Overcoming….Ten Step Program
I did not open the book and I can barely remember the title, but that was not the point. I had several Christian books with similar titles Overcoming Lust or Truth Path to Repentance. What I recognized was a familiar realization in my soul, my father has his battles and storms and people besides me hurt too. This is such a simple and crucial reminder. Thinking only about selves, we become self absorbed in our day to day actions, forgetting what we and don’t do affects those around us. Listen, in this life trials and tribulations will not stop coming. Pain does not discriminate. I love my parents, yet it is easy for me to forget they too suffer and sin. Seeing people daily creates assumptions in our mind where we perceive our friends and family to experience no difficulty, if the problem is not made visible. My father is human and one day, my mother and him will pass away into sweet eternity with Jesus.
However, why should I only think kind thoughts toward them? Kind actions and words are desperately needed in this wicked world. There is not a single human being, living a perfect, carefree life. When we’re kind and pray for those people struggling, we should always first pray God’s Will be done in their lives. Sure, we want to pray for their deliverance, but it is secondary to fulfilling God’s wonderful purposes in our loved ones lives. My prayer is we all pray, our loved ones trust God in the midst of their storms. Adversity makes us stronger, since it increases on dependency on the Holy Spirit and expands our knowledge about God.
Lastly, kindness requires action. Deliberate action. If the intent is to be kind, for the sake of kindness, then it is still self centered. Kindness means to take time, effort, and consideration to meet another person’s needs and expect no gratitude or appreciation in return. It means walking alongside someone in their weakness, being a great listener, offering godly advice or providing assistance. While gentleness is firmness. Gentleness does not mean you’re a pushover, of anything it is lovingly telling someone what they’re doing is wrong and in a Christlike mindset, encouraging them to seek reconciliation with God.
Both Gentleness and kindness are requirements to be loving children of God. Firm and patient, we’re ready to encourage stumbling Christians to continue to fight the good fight, no matter how times they fail. The Christian life is a family affair! We need each other.
1 Thessalonians 5:11
“11 Therefore encourage one another and build each other up, just as in fact you are doing.”
Copyright © 2018 by A Meeting at the Well
A Meeting at the Well 