The Forgotten Gift - The One Year Daily Acts of Kindness Devotional

The Forgotten Gift

God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

Romans 5:8, NIV

The year I met and married my husband, my future mother-in-law sent me a lovely box full of blue-and-silver wrapping paper and gift boxes. She knew they were my favorite colors, and she went out of her way to purchase them, package them up, and mail them across a distance of several states. Yet as wrapped up as I was in wedding plans, the box got lost in the maelstrom of wedding gifts, only to be recovered again months later. She must have thought I was so ungrateful!

Although I did drop the proverbial ball with my mother-in-law, our ingratitude as humans isn’t really unexpected. After all, our sinful nature is the most ungrateful of all when it comes to receiving acts of kindness. Here’s the ultimate demonstration of kindness: Christ gave us the gift of his death on the cross to cleanse us of our sins. Yet often our first response is, “Thanks, but you really didn’t have to. I’m okay without it.”

So many of us reject Christ and his gift of salvation, or diminish what a great gift it truly is by acting like it means less than it does. And what is his response? Does he say, “Well, if that’s the way it’s going to be . . . forget them!”? Thankfully, no. His response illustrates the love he has for us in spite of our sinful nature: he died for us even though we continue to sin.

Christ’s mercy in the face of our ingratitude sets a new bar for us. Rather than focusing on how others should receive our kind acts, thereby souring our attitude when things go awry, let’s focus on loving others despite their ingratitude, extending grace and kindness even if they don’t deserve it.

Have you been hurt by someone’s ingratitude? How can your expectations alter your attitude the next time a similar situation arises?

—Kristin

— Today’s Act of Kindness —

Go out of your way to extend kindness to someone who may not deserve it, remembering that we don’t deserve the gift Christ has given us. You could send them a note, give them a genuine compliment, or buy them a coffee.