Cultivating Winter 2025 – Edition 34 ~ Kindness!

“He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you but to do justice,

and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God”

Micah 6.8

Each season as a fellowship of writers and makers here with Cultivating, we work with a single topic of focus for that season, usually a single word. The word we work with works in turn with us. In the attention we give to it, it becomes a deeper part of us. One of the several wonders of this is that after we move to the next word in the next season, what we have laboured over in the season before does not leave us, but deepens, like a seed planted that has taken root. The word we have spent time with has taken up residence in us as a permanent fixture in the landscape of our interior being. Our word for this season of winter is Kindness.

Now as it happens, the word kindness is rooted to another word I deeply love ~ kindred. This is a word I can stare into like an infinite pool and not find the end to it. It is an amazing word of extraordinary implications. In Old English kyndnes meant “nation,” and it also meant “produce, an increase.” Kyndnes produces like kynd. In a simple definition I might say that kindness is one recognizing another human being as kindred, like-kind, and treating them as such. Kin. Own kind. To do good to one’s own kin. Before kindness is an act, it is a deep recognition of connection and love.

Recently, I’ve heard someone say rather vehemently that kindness is just socially sanctioned weakness. The reality is, in fact, quite the opposite. Real kindness is born of a deep power and strength. It is anything but shallow, non-confrontational behaviour, and it certainly is not weakness. It is more than social courtesy and far beyond mere “niceness”, though it is these days all too-often mistakenly called that. While there is little grandeur in most acts of kindness, it is steeped in an invisible glory. Kindness is ever an act of generosity. Simple and pure, kindness is one of God’s most defining characteristics. We see this referred to over and over in Scripture as “lovingkindness”, often connected to tender mercies. Lovingkindness is a quality inherent and unchanging in who God is. The Old Testament is laced with references to the covenant of God’s abiding, faithful love reflected and expressed in His lovingkindness. We ask for help and favour from the Lord based on this very quality in Him. He asks us to do as He does, and to be as He is, not because of our or another person’s deserving, but because of His.

“Let Your face shine on Your servant; save me for Your mercy’s sake and in Your loving-kindness.” ~ Psalm 31.16

Day to day, morning to night my experience of life is defined by the Lord’s constant kindness to me. This is my true and real personal experience. That doesn’t, of course, mean that I am spared from trouble or suffering. Anyone who knows much of my story knows that to be so. It does mean, however, that His kindness defines and rules the unfaltering boundary lines around me. It forms the climate of my life, the air I breathe, if you will. It gives me the space to receive grace, to heal, to trust, to un-strive. His kindness makes room for me to get back up when I stumble and fall. His kindness gives me permission to live transformatively. It is an extraordinary shield against the claims of evil. It stills the judgments and condemnation. In the covering of His protection, His kindness allows me to keep reaching for the Light. His kindness silences my shame and allows me to experience grace. His kindness is what allows me to succeed at anything. His kindness elevates me from dust to something living and bearing glory.

Kindness has shaped my life more profoundly than all the brutality and neglect I have ever suffered. As a child the kindnesses shown to me by strangers each bore a lingering witness to something else beyond my experience. The contrast alone changed the possibilities of my outcome. Those acts of kindness gave me the possibility of choice – and choice gave me hope before I even knew how to name it. More than sixty years later I still remember being changed by a kind nurse’s gesture when I was coming out of my first surgery. Three years later a woman I never knew of before gave my little sisters and me shelter for a week and with such kindness that I have never forgotten it. It was the first time I ever tasted lettuce, had a glass of juice, slept without fear for few nights, and saw femininity as something purely beautiful. Her name was Ruth. Her kindness was an unexpected light to me in a dark time and though I never saw her again, the power of her kindness that week leaves traces of grace in me to this day. I am grateful. 

If there is one thing alone that I hope you hear in all our stories this season of Cultivating, it is to never, ever underestimate the power of even a small act of kindness. Being kind is never a waste, whether it is reciprocated or not. It ripples into eternity and bears witness to the fountain of all Kindness, the Father of Lights. 

Like Light, kindness outlasts the darkness, nearly always in ways completely beyond our knowing.

Let me encourage you, friend, to think about the kindnesses you have been shown in your own life. How have those marked you? How do you now extend that experience to someone else? Where and when is it difficult to be kind? How might you cultivate kindness as a way of life?

As you read through this winter edition of Cultivating,  I pray you will find good words here that help you find your own and that kindness itself will twinkle all the more brightly to you.  May you ever keep company with your truest kindred! 

The featured image is courtesy of the incomparable Cultivator, Julie Jablonski, and used with her gracious permission for Cultivating. 

To read through all the posts for Cultivating Winter 2025 – Edition 34 ~ Kindness, click here.

Lancia E. Smith

Lancia E. Smith is an author, photographer, business owner, and publisher. She is the founder and Executive Director of Cultivating Oaks Press, LLC, Cultivating Magazine, and its fellowship of writers and makers.  She has been honoured to serve in executive management, church leadership, school boards, and Art & Faith organizations throughout her career.

Now empty-nesters, Lancia & her husband Peter make their home in the Black Forest of Colorado, keeping company with 200 Ponderosa Pine trees,  a herd of mule deer, an ever expanding library, and two beautiful black cats. Lancia loves land reclamation, website and print design, beautiful typography, road trips, being read aloud to by Peter, and cherishes the works of C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and George MacDonald. She lives with daily wonder of the mercies of the Triune God and in constant gratitude for the beloved company of Cultivators.

www.cultivatingoakspress.com