daily java

Daily Java: If your enemy is hungry, give him food to eat; if he is thirsty, give him water to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head, and the Lord will reward you. (Proverbs 25:21-22)

Somebody does something against you and the first inclination is to do something back. Tit for tat. He’ll get what’s coming to him.

What is hard to do is to ignore it and do something nice for him. That goes against the grain, it runs counter to everything we think we should do.

My dad, back in the 50’s, had an old Nash, a big ugly car with an undersized engine. I saw one, amazingly enough, about a year ago when I was working on the census sitting out in a front yard on the highway in Missouri. It was huge, and had a huge back seat. It had probably every bit as much room as I remember it having as a little boy.

My dad’s boss got a brand new Chrysler. He bragged to my dad that his car would run rings around that old car of my dad’s. Both were going to around the same place at the same time for a trip – don’t know what it was – but my dad’s boss talked about driving his car and how great it was going to be and how it was going to be so much better than my dad’s car.

Really rather a stupid display of pride. I will have to admit that I have trouble seeing the great burning desire to own a fancy car anyway. Probably a hole in my personality. I had my fancy new car - a 1981 black Mustang with T-Tops - which ended up almost owning me. When I got rid of it, I was through with fancy cars. In fact I bought a 1979 Dodge Dart when I got rid of it. A car is a car. Now I drive an older mini-van, the epitome of uncool.

Anyway, the day came. From what my dad says, we were driving along and around us pulls his boss with his brand new Chrysler, honking and accelerating. That Nash did well to drive down the street.

About an hour later, there was Dad’s boss sitting by the side of the road with a flat tire and no jack. My dad stopped, as he did for a lot of people when I was growing up, and changed the guy’s tire.

I don’t know what the reaction of the fellow was, but you can guess it was mortal embarrassment. It was the worst thing that could happen.

Dad could have continued on his trip, honking and waving, but he didn’t. By his helping change the tire, he had a victory over this guy that was greater than if he had outrun him.

Kindness is not always appreciated. But it is always good. Our culture doesn’t appreciate kindness and it is a shame. We value revenge, we value getting even, we value censorship if you don’t agree with me. We have also gotten to value pettiness. Hurting my feelings today is the mortal sin in our culture and we are the smaller for it.

But whether kindness is valued or not, as a Christian we do it. We help anyway. We love anyway. We change the idiot’s tire anyway. After all, we are children of God by faith in Christ Jesus. He was the one, you remember, that forgave the people who were killing him because he knew they didn’t really understand what they were doing.

He was always kind.

In 1 Corinthians 13, that great chapter on love, it says Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres (vv4-).

Real love is going to be kind and a side benefit is that the guy you help who has been being bad to you will feel like trash. That’s okay. He needs to.