Carry one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. Galatians 6:2
Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep. Romans 12:15

Have you ever been in an affluent residential neighborhood…houses whose prices go well into the millions? Ever notice how many of these houses have bars on the windows? Security gates? It’s like the homes of the moderately wealthy end up in the same category as prisons and mental institutions.

Quite often we don’t need physical bars on our windows and security gates to live with a besieged mentality. This is true in our homes, our lives and our churches. Our attitude toward the masses of people around us is to see them as strangers. Obstructions in our way. Interruptions in our lives. At best, something to maneuver around. Since we are not looking for connections, we bar them out of our lives in one way or another. We leave them outside of the gate.

This isn’t meant to be a guilt trip, but an eye-opener to the possibilities. If we bar those around us from our lives, we certainly aren’t alone in this. They are effectively barring us from their lives, too. Some of them by their words, nearly all of them by their actions, deliver to us the same message: “I’m not connected to you. Your problems have nothing to do with my problems. Your happiness has nothing to do with my happiness.” So they take us for granted and we take them for granted.

Which brings us to today’s verse. “Carry one another’s burdens”. Don’t be like the Pharisees, who “crush people with unbearable burdens,” Jesus said, “but they themselves never lift a finger to ease the burden” (Matt 23:4). In other words, don’t increase people’s burdens. Make them lighter.

The people we come in contact with have burdens…probably a load of them. Jesus calls us to detecting and lightening the burdens of others that share our lives…share our space. “Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who weep.” And don’t forget the people in between.

That’s Christian kindness in a nutshell.