Pattern it

"Show yourself in all respects to be a model (NKJV: "pattern") of good works, and in your teaching show integrity, dignity . . ." (Titus 2:7).

Once in a while a driver will let me merge in front of him in rush hour traffic. I am grateful, but not overmuch-the same driver may cuss me out a mile later. Such is natural man; his righteousness is uneven at best. No wonder Jesus didn't entrust himself to man (John 2:24-25).

The bumper sticker speaks better than we knew: "Random acts of kindness," it says, and heaven knows our kindnesses are random. We do a kindness when the mood strikes us, when we are feeling generous, when someone looks at us the right way, when we get our wave. But as one prison inmate puts it, "If y'ain't cool all the time, y'ain't cool."

I know someone who is given to great displays of graciousness, but has a hair-trigger temper. He may wonder why I am not more forthcoming in reciprocating his sweetness when it comes, and why I hold it at arm's length, but it is because I mistrust it. Even in laboratory experiments, rats that are dealt intermittent reinforcement when they press a lever will become neurotic.

The Apostle Paul tells Titus to be a "model" or "pattern" of good works. A pattern (not randomness, not occasionalness) makes people sit up and take notice. No one would ever expect it. People are expecting that you are like everyone else in the world-nice when people are nice to you, and nasty when people are nasty to you. Paul calls such irregular do-gooders "mere men" (1 Corinthians 3:4). But believers in Jesus are called to be more than "mere men." We are called to display an abiding pattern of goodness.

Let us then confound people's expectations of randomness, and be a pattern of good works. God's Word says to "Let your reasonableness (NKJV: "gentleness") be evident to everyone" (Philippians 4:5). Reasonableness and gentleness are "evident" only when there is a consistent and reliable habit of it. People learn how deep your patience is, your goodness, your joy, your self-control, when they see it shine like gold under a barrage of challenges.

My children have serious and legitimate issues with me, but one thing they know about me is that I am not a retaliator. I just don't have it in me (glory to God!). The first dozen times or so, they probably thought it was a fluke. But now they know it as a pattern. Patterns are valuable because they demonstrate possibilities for themselves for those who observe. They also may have this new life.

God is glorified in the difference between our flesh and His power. One random act of kindness now and then is fleshly. A sustained manifestation of kindness, under fire from many challenges, is the testimony of God's power.

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