Meeting the opposition

Never let loyalty and kindness leave you! Tie them around your neck as a reminder. Write them deep within your heart. Then you will find favor with both God and people, and you will earn a good reputation. (Proverbs 3:3-4)

Loyalty and kindness are certainly not the things we see 'delivered' today in so many interactions with others, are they? We find a lot of backstabbing in politics, many rumors flying about the lives and choices of various celebs, and just plain bad manners on our highways and byways at times. Is it possible our culture has forgotten these two 'hallmarks' of "ONE NATION UNDER GOD"?

Write them deep within your heart. Perhaps this is where our departure from simple kindness and unyielding loyalty began - we neglected to hide God's word deep within our hearts. Favor with God took backseat to favor with others. Favor with others seems to only be important if they can 'do' something for us. We forgot that our neighbor is our friend, and our enemy needs our prayers.

Norman Thomas reminded us, "The secret of a good life is to have the right loyalties and hold them in the right scale of values." When we align ourselves with those who don't share the same values as we do, they can actually change the 'scale of values' we embrace. It is best to align with those who will elevate our scale of values, helping us to grow deeper in love with Jesus.

It may seem hard to be loyal to the truths of God at times. In fact, there is so much opposition to this type of loyalty, it can even make us frightened to stand up for our beliefs in the face of untruth and hurtful actions. God's desire is for a faithful few who will embrace this life of loyalty to him - a remnant of sorts - then take the outflow of that loyalty into the world. When our loyalty to Jesus meets the opposition of the world, that is where kindness is best exhibited. Just sayin!