Verse of the Day for February 10

Paul has spent the previous verses listing what to put away: bitterness, wrath, anger, clamour, evil speaking, malice. It is a precise list and most of it describes how people talk.

Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you.

Tenderhearted is the word that stands out. It is a physical term — well-disposed in the gut — and it names something that bitterness slowly removes.

You can be technically forgiving and completely hard. Most long-running family arrangements run on exactly that: no active hostility, and no tenderness left either.

And the standard at the end is not proportional. Not forgive as much as they deserve. As God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you, which is a debt nobody in the sentence can calculate.

Hardness is the settlement most families reach when forgiveness has been declared but never felt.

Ask for tenderness back. It is a slower repair than forgiveness and a more thorough one.