Canter Bridge

Life with people often seems like a storm of chaos, intending to damage.

We are violent. If we cannot imagine striking out with our fists, then we destroy with a word, a sneer, the quick and lethal rolling of two eyes. With our need to voice disagreement with anything and anyone, as though the world waited breathlessly to know what I think about things that hardly matter.

Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you. (Ephesians 4:32 ESV)

The apostle leans upon the imitation of Christ as motivation for losing our hard hearts.

My heart is so like a boulder, unyielding, lying in wait for someone to break his ankle or concuss his head. I think of myself as stability, but I am simply a threat.

Hard as rock.

God is not like this, Paul writes. Look at how he has forgiven you in Christ. There is nothing unfeeling about that, no lurking danger. Be more like God.

English ‘tenderhearted’ nicely places Paul’s εὔσπλαγχνοι, with its etymological nod at a person’s innards. To have heart or viscera positively disposed is to meet people and events with an expectant smile rather than a defensive scowl. It is to imagine what this person could become—what she already is at her best—rather than to seek out the least common relational denominator and then get things over with.

To have a tender heart means being alive to life’s burdens, not in order to weigh down further but to lighten. Not to condemn, but to accompany.

As God in Christ forgave you.