Ephesians 4:1-6 (NLT)
Therefore I, a prisoner for serving the Lord, beg you to lead a life worthy of your calling, for you have been called by God. Always be humble and gentle. Be patient with each other, making allowance for each other’s faults because of your love. Make every effort to keep yourselves united in the Spirit, binding yourselves together with peace. For there is one body and one Spirit, just as you have been called to one glorious hope for the future. There is one Lord, one faith, one baptism, and one God and Father, who is over all and in all and living through all.
Be Gentle. When we envision gentleness, the word “soft” comes to mind. While this attribute tends to be easier for women, genuine gentleness is a difficult part of all of our walks as believers in the body. We are faced with much drama (and trauma) in the body. After this occurs, we’re left with a choice to make. Do we sever the body by lashing out verbally, physically ignoring them, or judging them under our breath, thus injecting more poison through the body? Or can we handle the situation differently. A Christ-like way. With gentleness. With a softness that won’t break them, but start the restoration process. Lift them up with grace and forgiveness, rather than amputating them and wreaking debilitating damage to the body as a whole. After all, isn’t this what Jesus did for us?
A story…
On shopping sprees with my wife, I instinctively slip away to make a pilgrimage to the bookshop. Poking around a while back, I paged through Heavier Than Heaven, a biography on the life of Kurt Cobain. Those of us who lived through the nineties either listened to, or at least heard, the “voice of our generation,” the depressed, angst-ridden, front man of the band Nirvana. The troubled soul who eventually rammed a shotgun in his mouth and blew his brains out. I scanned through descriptions of his bouts with depression and addiction, stomach pains and relationship issues. But a short passage in a rather obscure chapter reached out, gripped my heart, and ripped it out. Almost a physical pain. A lump even came up in my throat and my eyes got misty. The author reported of a time when Kurt “tried“ church. What Kurt met there was far from the body of Christ. Instead, he was met by a firing squad of contempt and judgment. In their eyes, he was only there to cause trouble, pollute their young people, pick up girls. And perhaps that was true. But do any of us come to Christ or to church with the purest motives? At least when we started. That experience, along with a couple of others, turned the young man away from Jesus and led to a life-long irritation for those of faith. And a depressive impact on a generation. And a hopeless life. And a lonely suicide. And a suicide that led to other suicides and disillusionment.
I don’t live in the past. Nor do I possess any regrets (for they’ve brought me to where I am today). But take a moment to contemplate the question: What if Kurt Cobain had encountered the body of Christ, love personified, Jesus with flesh on. Imagine if he had been loved with gentleness? The next time we meet in worship, look around and see your friends and others with habits, hurts, and hang-ups. Don’t turn your face or attention away from them. And please don’t judge and condemn them. But with gentleness, reach out and strengthen the body. We’re all in this together. And we’ll only stay together if we live lives of gentleness.
Practice gentleness…
