TODAY’S SCRIPTURE Exodus 34:6
How many times have you watched your favorite movie? I know families who watch It’s A Wonderful Life together every Christmas. How often do you listen to your favorite song or CD? Repetition in reading, listening, and viewing is like eating. You must eat more than one time. It is much like bathing; you need to do it over and over!
In God’s Word, the terms remember, remind, and remembrance appear about three hundred times. The words carry with them the meaning of “returning to mind,” and “bringing back to conscious memory what had been there before.” In our walk of Christianity, one of the blessings to increase our depth of gratitude is to remember and reflect often upon the character of God, specifically the kindness or abundant goodness of God.
There is one word used far more than any other in the Old Testament and it refers to a “kindly disposition.” This characteristic of God is acknowledged frequently throughout the Old Testament:
• David acknowledges it when he says: “Blessed be the Lord, for He has wondrously shown His kindness [steadfast love] to me” (Psalm 31:21).
• “For your kindness [steadfast love] is before my eyes” (Psalm 26:3).
• Nehemiah says that it was because of God being “gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love [kindness]” that He did not destroy Israel completely when she rebelled in the wilderness (Nehemiah 9:17).
• The willingness of God to forgive those who genuinely repent is due in large part to the fact that God is “slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love [kindness] (Joel 2:13).
God’s ultimate expression of His kindness is clearly seen in sending Christ, His Son as our Savior (Ephesians 2:7). The term kindness is used to describe the earthly life and sacrificial death of Christ in Titus 3:4, “When the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared.”
Today I will…strive to focus deeper on the kindness God has demonstrated and shows to me on a daily basis! “How precious is Your kindness [steadfast love], O God!” (Psalm 36:7).