Pastor Stringer is in the process of packing up his office for the move to Georgia. I don’t like goodbyes.

Even though we will both continue to labor for the good news, it won’t be the same. I’ve been a little wistful, revisiting sweet memories over the course of the last ten years . . .

Sharing Josh’s enthusiasm for books during his resident stint with the bookstall

Talking with old and new friends over south campus dinners when we met at Edison Middle School

Having a resident butcher who helped me know what to do with a tenderloin or how to brine a turkey

Heeding the call for 500 cinnamon rolls on Easter Sunday (that was Josh’s idea)

Laughing, almost crying and praying with him and other men at Men’s Bible Study. (I know; he’s not taking our Bible study with him, but we will miss him.)

Watching Lorraine and his daughter, Annie, share an air hug at the end of a recent Wednesday night

This week, Josh offered some books to the pastors and directors. Looking through the stack, I took one: Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology by Dr. Walter Elwell.

In February 2019, I wrote a Saturday Musing about the word lovingkindness and William Tyndale, the Bible translator who created the English word. This word has stuck in my head and heart since then.

So when I got to my office with my new used treasure, I immediately opened to the word "lovingkindness" to see what the author had to say about it. The entry runs a full column. Here is a bit of what it says.

“The translation of the Hebrew word hesed in the KJV,” the entry begins.“…The nature of the God of Israel is love. Even when Israel has sinned, they are assured that Jehovah is full of lovingkindness. …The God of the covenant shows his covenantal faithfulness by his loving commitment to his people, regardless of their responsiveness or righteousness.”

As I have ruminated on the word over time, it seems as if this loving impulse of God is so opposite of my human impulses. That distinct otherness of God, manifested most obviously and fully in Jesus. I want unconditional love from God, and I’m getting it, but I’m not so sure I want to extend that love personally to others.

Nevertheless, Elwell’s entry continues to a place I'm not sure I want to go:

“The God who is love also expects his people to be sanctified by demonstrating lovingkindness to their covenant God and to others.”

So Josh is leaving, and even in his departure, God is using him (and his dictionary gift) to remind me of who God is and how he is calling me to live. I can be like Christ. I can walk in hesed, but it’s lovingkindness with a limp.

The nature of God, so antithetical to my natural human instincts, is more wonderful and right than anything I can manufacture in my humanity. Somehow, the Spirit works in and through us. We trust and rejoice and move forward.

God calls the Stringers to a new place. I pray God’s lovingkindness will be manifest in this move and in their church. In a post on his website, Michael Card, who wrote a whole book on hesed, shares a definition for the Hebrew word: “when the person from whom I have a right to expect nothing gives me everything.”

Thanks Josh, for your lovingkindness with a limp. Thank you for giving, well, not everything exactly, but a lot.