DAILY DEVOTION, January 6, 2022

Micah 6:8: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?”

OK, I believe in Jesus. What’s next? Micah gives us a good answer in the above text. Let’s think about kindness. Kindness is among the most basic requirements for the believer. Sometimes our acts of kindness meet with only cold ingratitude from the recipients of those acts. That’s all right. We seek to obey Jesus.  How others respond to us is on them. Whether we are talking about how we treat one another in church, or how we treat the waitress who gets our order wrong, or the clerk at Walmart who was rude, or the foreigner we can barely understand who is trying to help us with our computer problem, kindness is the first business of a follower of Jesus. Paul expresses this truth very clearly. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Eph. 4:32). God has been kind to us, undeserving though we are. We are to treat everyone with kindness.

If you were given a dollar for every kind word or deed you said or did and then had to give back a dollar for every unkind word or deed, would you be rich or poor? Think about it.   Are you a kind-hearted person? God requires it of you.

Father, help me to receive Your Word about kindness. Help me to put it into practice. I hope when I leave this earth, I will be remembered as a kind person. In Jesus’ name, I pray, Amen.