Be gentle

I have decided this month to meditate on gentleness. The other night when I was at the airport I saw something rising up in me that could only have been pride. It is very hard to be gentle when one is proud but if I am the Lord’s servant I am required to be gentle. Among the scriptures encouraging one to be gentle there is this crazy-sounding promise:

 

Timothy 2:24 (NKJV) And a servant of the Lord must not quarrel but be gentle to all, able to teach, patient, [25] in humility correcting those who are in opposition, if God perhaps will grant them repentance, so that they may know the truth...

 

Imagine that. If I am gentle and correct people humbly if they need it, then God may grant them repentance and they may know the truth. We all know the glorious freedom that comes from the truth. Well some of us do anyway.

 

When living in Hephzibah there are plenty of opportunities to be humble and gentle. I do recall though in the past it can take a fair degree of self-control to be like that. When you are out of your cultural comfort zone somehow the locals feel free to take the opportunity to tell you what to do. And while that can be very helpful if one does not know what to do it can also be extremely aggravating if one does know. Unless of course one stays gentle and humble which takes self-control. Self-control, humility and gentleness. Hmmmm.  

 

Also when one is out of one’s comfort zone, one might not be as tolerant as one would be at home. And what to do when someone tries to rip you off or refuses to take you in their taxi or won’t leave you alone when you are at the market.

 

I’ll give you gentle buddy.

 

Last month I mediated on as many scriptures as I could find about trusting God. That was bit of a disaster in one way because I had so many opportunities to trust God. It was like difficult and challenging circumstances were magnetised to me because of my study. Glory to God though we broke through to a new level of trust.

 

So I wonder how we will go responding gently and humbly to the challenges of living here for two weeks.

 Grace, grace, grace.