Can I be honest? For a long time, gentleness seemed like a cop-out.
I understood gentleness as weakness.
My family as a whole values strength, along with competency, work ethic, and self-reliance. I like to think I was raised to value these traits.
Therefore, gentleness was something I struggled to connect the dots on: used to be that when I read about it in the Bible, it seemed more like powerlessness.
Well, I got schooled. By animals. Which just goes to show that, if it comes naturally to them, I should be able to get on board, too.
When the following story took place, it just so happened that I was in the middle of reading about the fruit of the Spirit. On this day, back in 2023, I’d landed on gentleness.
I was praying about struggling to understand it because, well, I can be slow to learn and difficult to teach.
And then I met a dog.
Or, two dogs, really.
God works things in odd ways, but He’s quite good at driving a point home.
In July 2023, Trey and I took a trip to Lewis Smith Lake for a vacation with my mother-in-law, Tamela, as well as the McCurren crew- Chelsea, Andrea, and the kiddos.
We’d rented a pontoon boat for the day, and I think (if memory serves correctly) we were going to pick up the boat. Or go fill up the boat with gas.
Unimportant details I wish I could remember.
When we got to the dock, to my delight, there were two dogs.
Now, this was pre-Boone, so at this time, I wasn’t a bona fide dog person. However, I appreciated dogs. It’s hard not to, even if you don’t have one of your own.
Both of the dogs were labs, but one was a good bit older- she was probably seven or eight.
The other was just a puppy- all limbs, teeth, and energy.
And as we were at the dock, that puppy was irritating the stew out of the older lab. When she laid down, he would jump on her, pull on her ears, get all in her face: if you’ve ever seen two siblings going at it, you understand exactly what that younger pup looked like.
The older dog? She didn’t respond.
She didn’t bite at him. She didn’t growl or get angry.
Now, she could have snapped him in half: she easily had fifty pounds on the puppy, weight she could have freely used to her advantage.
And yet, she didn’t.
The owner of the boat and the dogs watched them for a minute, and then he said, “She just lets him do his thing. She’s so gentle.”
I’m dense, but even I could see that wasn’t a coincidence. God was teaching.
Gentleness isn’t lacking power.
Gentleness is knowing you have power, but also understanding you don’t just throw it around. We walk differently because of that power, but we use it with great care. We understand it’s a weapon we can’t let our insecurities or emotions control.
Again, that sweet, old lab could have knocked that puppy into next week. And yet, she didn’t.
I could do with more gentleness in my life.
In our culture, power is used for great gain, often at the expense of people who don’t have that same power. It’s not something limited to the elites: we’re constantly vying for first place, no matter what our starting point is.
We’re told that we should use anything and everything at our disposal to get to the top of the heap.
The call to and growth of gentleness in our lives begs us to go about things in a different way.
Gentleness is understanding that not everything requires a response, and though we have the power to eviscerate, we choose not to use it to that end.
Personally, my lack of gentleness is most evident in how I speak to others. My mouth gets me in trouble.
When I get angry, all of a sudden, thoughts of gentleness go out the window. Maybe that’s God’s reminder to me that I do not, in fact, have it all figured out.
It’s easy to be gentle when everything is going our way, but a little adversity is humbling.
I have a lot of room to grow.
Gentleness is the small rebellion for the week.
It’s not cowardice, and it’s also understanding that power certainly has its time and place.
May I have the discernment to see the when and where to use it. Big surprise: when left to my own devices, I won’t get this right.
Someone is a lot better at calling the shots than me. He’s the One who teaches lessons with dogs.
May I constantly be reminded that I don’t know best, and may I remember the gentleness with which God treats me.
Happy Saturday!
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