A Prayer For Loving Kindness

Father, it is easy to express love and kindness when we’re responding to one who has expressed these virtues toward us. We’re awfully good at giving back that which we receive. But often the people who need it most are those who express little love and kindness. Their hearts are sometimes consumed with so much self-pity and resentment they have little room left for the works of the Spirit such as love, joy, peace, and kindness. Help us to respond to a brother or sister in need or lay upon our hearts one who has exercised little kindness toward us. Help us to lay down our suffering related to their unkind ways, so that we can take up the love You offer us when we’re most unlovable and extend it to those who seem unloveable to us. We want to offer love and kindness to others as an extension of Your love and kindness toward us, for when we were dead in our trespasses and sins You made us alive in Christ. Help us to be people of grace as You have extended it to us. In the name of Jesus we pray. Amen.