Love is patient. Love is kind. The two both seem to sprout forth from a common ground of grace. Where patience is a matter responding with grace, kindness is a matter of initiating grace. Patience is gracious in its reaction and kindness is gracious in its proactivity.
Kindness seeks out ways to exert extra thought and effort on someone’s behalf. Kindness necessitates that we think of another—which therefore means that our thoughts take a break from being on ourselves. And so when we pursue kindness, we are also allowing space for the cultivation of selflessness.
And that kind of seems to be the way of it. As I meditate on each of these attributes of love, I can’t help but continue to recognize their interconnectedness. Love begets more love which begets more love. The cycle of love can be every bit as catching as its counterpart, but something has to initiate the cycle. God has served as the catalyst in this love cycle and when we lean into that, the choice of love renders us more loving creatures. When we make intentional choices with regard for the good of others, we usher good into their life as well as transformation of ourselves.
The orderly side of myself sort of wanted to be able to write about each attribute of love nicely and neatly, wrap it up, and proceed to the next. But they’re a mess of intersections. They weave in and out of one another and the more the threads accumulate, the clearer it becomes that love is about participating in relationships that give mutual life. This is the sort of relationship we were designed for.
Meditating on love as kindness requires contemplation of where the abstract meets the practical. Where might we go about initiating grace in our lives today? What ways can we be initiators of goodness today on someone else’s behalf? Kind words? Kind actions? How can we make someone feel thought of and valued?
