Cords of Human Kindness

“I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.”

(Hosea 11:4)

Sometimes we have to look really hard to see kindness around us.

I’ve had a day like that today, when I’ve had to consciously search for kindness, I had to really want to see it to find it. Because unkindness or carelessness are so much more noticeable, and often so much more the usual experience, and it’s getting me down. It’s making me angry as well. It’s not hard to be kind. And it doesn’t just make the day better for the person you’re kind to, but also for you yourself.

So to read this verse soothes my soul a little.

“To them I was like one who lifts a little child to the cheek, and I bent down to feed them.” 

Here is kindness.

Here is a chance to rest in a presence of warmth and care and tenderness, a chance that doesn’t have to be deserved or earned. Here is kindness for its own sake, here is someone who is kindness, without agenda, without hidden judgment. 

The “cords of human kindness” and the “ties of love” are just what happens when kindness and love meet us in someone – we begin to seek their presence, we are drawn to them, we feel this is a place where it’s good to be, where it’s safe to trust. So that’s a place then, too, where it’s safe to take risks, to make changes, to grow, to spread our wings. This is the kind of place people flourish in.

This is the “easy yoke” and the “light burden” Jesus speaks about – not judgment and law, but mercy and compassion.

It is no hardship to follow Jesus and to love God. It’s just hard to believe sometimes that there actually is someone who is that loving, that kind, that welcoming to us.

I hope you know God like this. I hope you have experienced the deep kindness of God for yourself. 

You are wanted. You are welcome. Here is a safe place for you. Here you are trusted. And here you can trust and let your guard down, and be yourself, without fear of judgment or manipulation or any other kind of hurt. 

There are people who have never felt love like this. There are people who are hanging on by a thread today, and it matters deeply if you are kind or unkind to any person you meet today. Show others that they are seen and valued and that they don’t have to earn that as a “favour” from you. Be kind.

“I led them with cords of human kindness,
with ties of love.
To them I was like one who lifts
a little child to the cheek,
and I bent down to feed them.”