The Kindness of Love
1 Corinthians xiii. 4 v.
“Love is kind.”
What a small thing to say as an introduction to the praise of love! It is like saying that a great soldier has conquered a mile of ground. Love is so high, and kindness so homely; love, so much in the heavens, and kindness so near the earth. Yes; but the lowliest things are the hardest to illuminate. The triumph of the sun light is the kindling of the vale. Even so is the triumph of love. It leaps from the mountains to the valleys, and in the valleys it is perfected. Love’s morning is in great things, but its evening is in the trifles of life. It rises by shedding its blood, but it culminates by diffusing its kindness. It learns in its dawn how to die, but its fulness tells it how to live. Kindness is the latest flower of love; it is self-surrender in small things. It is the last rose of the heart’s summer. It is love playing on the surfaces of life, gilding their very trifles with its glory. It is love become habitual, become chronic, become spontaneous — love running over the borders and making beauty on the dusty way. The keeper of the garden may smile when he can say “love is kind.”
Thou Christ of Calvary, give me Thy latest flower. Give me the bloom that runs over the border. Give me the unconscious power of making glad. I have read that after the box was broken its fragrance filled the house. The brokenness was love’s morning, but the fragrance was its evening gold. The brokenness was for Thee: the fragrance was for all. I have lonsf had the brokenness, but I have not yet come to the fragrance. My pride has been shattered like the alabaster fragments, and I have lain prostrate at Thy feet; but Martha’s part must come after Mary’s. Help me into helpfulness; tend me into tenderness; kindle me into kindness. Give me the over-flowing cup — the cup that carries more than myself can hold. Give me the branches running over the wall — making beautiful the hard places. Give me the miDistrant hand for Cana, and the beneficent feet for Galilee. Lend me the healing touch which men call tact, which Thou callest contact — the power to cure the wound without pressing on the sore. Thou shalt perfect Thy loving kindness when Thou hast made my love kind.