Jesus’ gentle life and tender teachings actualize God’s aims and purposes for all creation. Jesus learned to incorporate each moment of his life in an experience of God’s life and his growing consciousness of God’s presence linked the past action of God in the prophets like Isaiah and Hosea to his ministry that created a vision for the future. That union was a fusion of human and divine love that enables us to look back to beginning times and glance forward to end times.  Thus in Jesus’ tender words and gentle actions we see and feel God acting. Past, present, and future become a unity bound up in loving kindness. Love is a uniting force. Staying power resides in these tender teachings. Simple acts of loving kindness to our self, our family, and to all living things are the most hopeful and powerful transformers in the world and may very well be our greatest hope of survival when relationships between countries have reached dangerous levels of disharmony and environmental changes threaten the future of our planet. 

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Dwayne Cole is a retired pastor of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church. He earned his degrees, including a Ph.D. in New Testament with a major in Greek, from Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky. Dr. Cole lives with his wife, Beth, in Alaska.  They have two adult children and two grandchildren.