There are words that we use so often that we lose the depth of their meaning. I tease my wife that her favorite adjective is “amazing” and so whether it’s a hamburger, the last episode of Downton Abbey or last week’s sermon, if she liked it you can almost guarantee that it was “amazing”. The word “awesome” can describe anything from the force of a tornado to how I feel about Elijah’s last cart-wheel. Just think of how we use the word love; we love our spouses, our children, our favorite sports team, out next meal and God. How can the same word possibly describe our feelings for each of those things? It can’t and it shouldn’t and yet we have allowed each of these words and many others to become so familiar that they, at times, now have little of their original meaning. The question we are going to start with today is “What does it mean to say that that God is kind?” To grasp this part of God’s character we have to first be able to define what it means for God or anyone to be kind. Somehow, in our overuse of the word, kindness is now equated with being nice. Now it’s kind to say what I needed to hear, to be where I wanted you to be and to do what I hoped you would do. There is nothing wrong with any of those things but all of them fall short of kindness. If I can be honest, God is always kind but that in no way means that we are going to always think that God is being nice. Conviction is kind, a loving rebuke is kind, discipline is kind, but the book of Hebrews tells us that no discipline is pleasant at the time. God is always kind even if we don’t think everything He does feels nice. The combination of several different online dictionaries gives us a definition of kindness that involves generosity, sweetness, consideration and friendship. Even the biblical words that have been translated as “kind” or “kindness” are so broad that they can also mean “goodness, gracious or gentleness”. Like all of God’s character traits what we see is that His kindness is much deeper, broader, longer and wider than we have ever fully understood. This morning I am hoping that we will see that God’s kindness has more than a definition, it has a face, a name and a purpose. His kindness isn’t simply how He feels about us it is who He is, He is kind; it is what He does, He acts with kindness toward us; and it is both how we come to relationship with Him and how we are to live in our relationships with each other, His kindness leads us to repentance. Today I pray that we can begin a discussion about God’s kindness that will lead us to lives of receiving and giving the kindness of God.