More than our Gumption

 

Love is patient. Love is kind.

 

Paul begins a litany of describing and defining love with two words ~ patient and kind.  Fun Bible Nerd fact, the word “love” in Hebrew (that Paul would have learned as a Jewish lad) is hesed.  This is a word usually reserved to refer to God.  And the word, hesed, is difficult to translate into English or into some definitive definition ~ just like God.  God is always breaking and bursting out of boxes that we want to put God into, so we can control and comprehend God.  One Jewish scholar says that hesed, is “completely undeserved kindness and generosity.”  Hesed is not just a cozy and cuddly feeling that warms the cockles of our hearts like a mug of hot chocolate; Hesed is active.  Hesed is the restorative work in the world that goes beyond our human abilities and agendas.  Fun Bible Nerd fact (I know, two in one morning meditation, how lucky are you?), in the book of Ruth, Ruth embodies, embraces, and expresses a hesed love for Naomi, her mother-in-law, after the three tragic deaths of the men in the family.  Hesed is the willingness to show up again and again and again, trusting that God is not finished.  Hesed is willing to bravely and boldly be in the world in a way that doesn’t play by the rules and regulations of power or politics or even piety that is preached from pulpits.  Hesed isn’t interested in the balance sheet or transactions but wants to affirm the goodness and God-ness of all that was, is, and will be.  Paul had grown up hearing about Hesed, but Paul was a poor practitioner of this word.  He persecuted early followers of Jesus.  He was a brash bully, convinced of his own convictions rather than confessing his own vulnerability.  I see this play out too much in our world today.  We are echoes of the early Paul wanting to prove those “other people” wrong and foolish and the problem.  We get our paperwork for the permission to hate from the news networks of our choice and the invisible algorithms that control what pops up on social media.  Both patience and kindness take time and a lot of prayer.  Living the patient and kind hesed of God is more gumption than I have on my own.  Which is to say, both patience and kindness happen only with God’s gracious/self-giving Spirit.  Is there someone and somewhere today you need patient and kind love?  Name that, pray that, seek to breathe in God’s grace in new ways.  And may you feel supported and surrounded by a patient and kind God whose love has us and will never let us go.  Amen.