A Summer of Kindness

I’ve been thinking a lot about kindness, justice and humility as the summer approaches and we have been getting ready for our intergenerational #summerofkindness challenge. 

To start, let’s acknowledge that some translations read, “love mercy” and others “love kindness.”  This demonstrates the inexactness that lies within the art form of translating ancient and dead languages.  The Hebrew word being translated is hesed and throughout the Old Testament the translation will vary: kindness, mercy, lovingkindness, in goodness, kindly.  From a simple Google search resulting in many references which tend to agree, I am able to say with confidence that hesed refers to the positive, uplifting, life-giving relationship between people who are devoted to God and God’s relationship towards humanity.  So yes, it means kindness and yes, it also means mercy.  But just so we are all on the same page, for our purposes this summer we will be using kindness. It is always important to remember that translations vary and there is room to wiggle and wrestle out meaning.

Secondly, what I’ve also worked out through all this time spent preparing for our summer together, is the interconnectedness of these attributes.  It is difficult to have one without the other in some form and capacity.  As much as we would like to believe what these words mean, just as there is room in the Hebrew, there is room for us to wiggle and wrestle out what these words mean in our daily lives, our modern context and how justice, kindness and humility manifest in the 21st century.  I firmly believe we have a summer worth of wiggling and wrestling with these three attributes.  Each month we will look at them from a different angle.  In June from the perspective of the Old Testament, in July and a bit of August, we’ll look at what Jesus says about each of these attributes and we will end wondering about justice, kindness and humility in relationship to our neighbor right now, today. 

It’s going to be an interesting and I hope exciting summer of living out God’s call in our lives so I pray you choose to join in this community-wide, intergenerational challenge. 

Peace,
Pr. Hannah