Gentle, gentle
“Jesus said, ‘Father, forgive them, for they do not know what
they are doing.’”
-Luke 23:34
We teach toddlers how to touch one another by saying, “Gentle, gentle.” One child even came to believe that it was her cousin’s name, she heard it so much. God must spend all of our lives watching us reach for each other, grabbing money out of each others hands, hitting, pushing out of the way, caressing only to be caressed, and God must grow tired of saying, “Gentle, gentle.”
Kindness comes in words, gentleness in touch. Gentleness is love in Braille. It is the ability to communicate the heart of God through the nerve endings in the tips of your fingers, all words aside. Gentleness communicates that, in our hands, God’s word will be more like a surgeon’s scalpel than a battle axe. Despite its power to cut, it will be used to heal.
On the cross Jesus gave us the central example of gentleness, when he pleaded for his murderers. They not only took his life but his dignity, gambling for his clothes. Imagine all of the things that have happened at the foot of his cross: confession, martyrdom, and surrender on the one hand, and on the other a dice game that belittles all the rest. He said, “Forgive them, because they don’t know what they’re doing.” At exactly the point that its courts would have been most justified in issuing wrath, all of heaven echoed: “Gentle, gentle.”
– James W. Miller, God Scent p. 83 © 2006