Loving + Kindness = My Shepherd

I like some of the less-used compound words that are part of the English language: notwithstanding, nevertheless, wherewithal, whosoever come to mind. I just like their multiple syllables and how the words have been mashed together to create one word with its own unique meaning. One of my favorite words that came up in our church service yesterday was the word lovingkindness - not just kindness, not just love, but lovingkindness, and in the verse we read yesterday we saw there could be more than one - lovingkindnesses (Isaiah 63:7). 

There are days when I don't think I can function without knowing that God's lovingkindness was there for me, days when I would rather stayed cocooned in my bed with the shades drawn, trying to sleep away my life, days when I feel like nobody should have to be exposed to who I am. But then from somewhere, the memory of God's lovingkindness seeps past the weeds and the cobwebs darkening my heart to give me hope that such as I am, God has chosen me and has put me into other people's lives for a purpose and that He is not finished with me no matter what I think. 

I don't even think I know what lovingkindness is, but just the sound of that word - loving plus kindness - and the fact that God is the source of lovingkindness is all I need to know. He is carrying me like the good shepherd carries the lamb on his shoulders - the lamb that has the matted, dirty fleece snarled with burrs and twigs, the one that has fallen and injured himself by doing something really stupid - that lamb who is me, and my great shepherd is singing and rejoicing over me. 

Me.

Unbelievable. 

That is lovingkindness to me.

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