God’s “General Kindness.” The Reason Why I Did Not End My Life

Depressed, longing for escape, I approached Alderley Edge, a high cliff in the Cheshire hills, with the fixed intention of stepping over and ending my life. It was January, and it was cold with a harsh wind; but it was sunny, and the skies were clear and blue. The trees were bare, but they still had beauty; there were no flowers, but the grass was green and alive. Titmice and nuthatches flitted through the dark branches or patrolled the trunks for insect larvae. It was midwinter and it was glorious.

There, one step from eternity, I was held back by the beauty of the natural world around me. If there could be such beauty even in winter, surely there had to be some answer to my questions besides meaninglessness. I walked back to the bus stop and returned to the university determined to keep looking.

I didn’t know then what I’ve since come to cherish.

Despite all we do to ruin this world, everywhere we look we see both the majesty of the creator and also the wonder of his commitment to give richly to all that he has made.

Christians have often referred to this divine commitment as “common grace,” or what I think of now as “the general kindness of God.”

 Jesus and God’s General Kindness

There is much more to say about common grace, but we can begin by noticing that when Jesus looks out at the world of living things, he describes this kindness of God by showing us the heavenly Father who provides for all creatures.

 Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. (Matthew 6:26-29)

 In addition to seeing God’s love for all creatures displayed, we also see his even deeper commitment to us as human persons.

Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? (Matthew 6:26-29)

Lest we are tempted to respond to my last point that God cares only for those who are his children through faith in Jesus, Jesus sets aside this thought with his assertion of how deeply committed God is to serving and caring for even those who are his enemies. Jesus says:

• Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father     in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good and sends rain on the just    and on the unjust. (Matthew 5:43-45)

• The Most High . . . is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful even as your Father is      merciful. (Luke 6:27-36; see also Acts 14:17)   

For Jesus, the general kindness of God for all living things, human and non-human, including our enemies, establishes our own disposition of kindness toward persons, animals, places and things.

Learning to See the World Again

God’s general kindness also invites us to see this world as God’s “glorious theater.”

Wherever you cast your eyes, there is no spot in the universe wherein you cannot discern at least some sparks of his glory . . . a sort of mirror in which we can contemplate God, who is otherwise invisible.[1]

 We marvel at “how God’s imagination daily loads us with benefits. [We] contemplate this embarrassment of riches.”[2] We grow in praise, adoration and love for this God (Psalm 104, 145).

We learn that God’s kindness toward every created thing is not random but intentional; a covenant made, a promise he pledged to keep (Genesis 1:27-28; 9:1-17). Our resistance to God amid such abundance is seen all the more wretched (Romans 1:18-21).

Think of the words of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the 19th century Christian poet: 'The world is charged with the grandeur of God.' He writes too of the damage we as humans do to this glorious creation and then says that yet 'there lives the dearest freshness deep down things' because the Holy Spirit still broods over this bent world to give constant life and beauty to it.

 Kindled Hope in My Heart

When my plan for suicide was stalled by beauty in winter, I did not know at the time, that I was experiencing what David describes in Psalm 19:1-6 or what Paul asserts in Romans 1:19-20. I did not know why Jesus found hope for the anxious by inviting them to see again this general kindness of God enduring amid the scarcities, questions and fears of the world. (Matthew 6:26-29)

But I see more clearly now. There on the edge of my death, the glory of God had been shown to me by earth and sky, and while I did not yet know it was His glory, I knew it was glorious and that there must be some reason for its glory. This glory kindled hope in my heart once more.

[1] John Calvin, Institutes, 1.V, 1-2.

[2] Daniel Loizeaux, “The Imagination of God,” Genesis: Journal of the Society of Christians in the Arts, Inc., (Vol. 1, no.2), 72.