the summer of lovingkindness

So I've been reflecting this summer on that compound-ular word found all throughout the Scriptures (or at least after Myles Coverdale coined the word in 1535): lovingkindness. And not just because the player formerly known as Ron Artest is now Metta World Peace. Love and kindness are two words whose marriage is not obvious, and that the fact that they can be married has everything to do with the Gospel, that's been the thought. Love, which is assumed to be an inward disposition, such that one person can assure another of her love, even while they're far apart and love has nothing to "show for it"; kindness, which in practice is an explicitly outward behavior, such that one can be accused of being kind "even when you didn't mean it." But put the words together and you have a meeting of the inward disposition and the outward expression. Love that acts, and acts that love. Faith, that is, belief with intention, and action. Jesus, being and living out of his being God's Love for the world. And how can it be otherwise? On second thought, maybe it is obvious, this marriage of love and kindness. The confusion would be how we came to imagine one without the other in the first place.