Detour to Kindness

A honey bee, with its travels checked by the United States Department of Agriculture, will ordinarily travel some 300,000 miles to collect one pound of honey! Have you ever noticed how some people travel far out of their way just to be ... rude or mean!  I once missed a deadline and humbly asked for a little grace; I got the grace but it was expensive -- extended with such harshness I wished I had not asked!  I wondered when I hung up the phone what self-gratification could there possibly be in making another person feel horrible!  One of the first verses I learned, I learned as a child: "And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you." (Ephesians 4:32).  Why is it so hard for us to be kind?  Perhaps it's because we haven't put away all  "bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking" as instructed in Ephesians 4:31. Furthermore, in Verse 29 we are told to "let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth" and that the words we speak "impart grace to the hearers. "While the sting of her words were still fresh, I wonder who I had stung with my own unkind words. The road to unkindness is clearly the road more traveled, but for Believers, we best obediently make our path the ... detour to kindness!