Philippians 4:5a

Posted by DJL on Nov 23, 2012 in Daily Bread | 0 comments

Let your gentleness be known to everyone.

“Gentleness” is one of those words I’m not completely sure what to do with.

It’s not that I don’t have any idea what it means; it’s more that it feels like its meaning has been narrowed by our popular use of the word. We want to find a laundry detergent that is gentle on our clothing, a soap that is gentle to our skin. We want grandmas to be gentle and we sing that baby Jesus was sweet, gentle, and kind.

So what does it mean, then, for us to “let our gentleness be known to everyone.” I worry that when a lot of us hear this we think it means that Christians should be vanilla – you know, not causing a stir. Or worse, we take this as an invitation to be milquetoast, to be a doormat, never complaining, letting others walk all over us.

The Greek word Paul uses can certainly be translated a gentle and mild, but it can also be translated as lenient, fair, equitable, suitable, and reasonable.

That changes things a bit for me. It’s like of like Paul is saying, stay confident even when things are difficult. Or, be reasonable with everyone. Or, as Eugene Peterson translates it in The Message, “Make it as clear as you can to all you meet that you’re on their side, working with them and not against them.”

That makes more sense to me. That one product of our joy in the Lord – of knowing God’s grace and being able to share it with others – is a certain confidence about our life and our relationships, a reliable trust in God that allows us to be fair, to be reasonable, to be kind to others rather than imagine them as competitors or, perhaps worse, as a means to an end.

That strikes me, in fact, as a potentially strong witness to what it means to be a Christian: to so trust God with our lives and future what we can be fair, be reasonable, be on side of those around us. Why? Because God has promised us the future, which frees us to spend ourselves generously and confidently in the present.

Prayer: Dear God, so root us in trust in you that we worry less about ourselves and our future and instead give ourselves over to help others. In Jesus’ name, Amen.