“Rejoice in the Lord always!  And again, I say, rejoice!  Let your gentleness be known to all.  The Lord is near.  Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition with thanksgiving, make your requests known to God, and the peace of God that passes all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.”

For a long time I knew verse 4 and verse 7 by heart.  Everyone wants to be happy, have joy, so rejoice! – yea, that’s cool.  And then everyone has problems, so sure, I need to hand those problems over the Lord and have a peace about them.  Anxiousness is a sin, right?

Now, I think, maybe I missed the whole point.  See I never stopped to realize that “Let your gentleness be known to all.  The Lord is near.” was sandwiched right in the middle of that.  When I first noticed it, I thought, “Wow, that’s really disjointed.  One thing has nothing to do with the other.  He’s just throwing phrases around.  Right?”

I don’t think so.  I think they are very related to each other and without the middle of the sandwich, you are not getting fed at all . . . well, hardly.

See if this makes sense to you:  People who are rejoicing, regardless of circumstances, are happy people, right?  Happy people are gentle people.  People who are conscious of their gentleness towards other people are gracious and full of peace.  I know, – it’s hard to think of someone like that, right?  They just aren’t around much.

Then add to that, “The Lord is near.”  WELL, there’s a two-edged sword now isn’t it?  If you’re doing okay, it’s a comfort.  Hey, the Lord’s near, He’s in control, you can relax!  BUT, if you’re not okay, if you’re fretting and getting cross with people (ie, not gentle!) then it’s a reminder.  Hey, God’s right here and he sees you whacking people with a two x four left and right!

Then Paul gives us the recipe for all those anxious thoughts threatening to undo us. Pray, ask God, thank Him for His response, because you know He’s not deaf and He’s not unsympathetic and He’s got superpowers and THEN you get peace.

But I think the key is gentleness.  It’s like the kiwi of fruit.  You know it’s good, and you like the taste, but you have to peel it and it’s squishy, so you forget about it and only try it when someone hands it to you already prepared on a platter.  You get the idea.  No one goes around saying, “Sure wish I was more gentle.  Gotta get me some gentleness, oh yeah.  How many praise songs relish in the joy of being gentle to one another?  No, I think we don’t really want to admit that we just don’t want to be gentle.

Being gentle accommodates the self-control fruit, the thinking of others as more than yourself fruit, the patience fruit, and yes, even the joy fruit.  Unhappy people are NOT gentle people.  Think about it.

Mom’s in the kitchen burning the rice, grumbling about no one else ever washing the dishes and Dad being late again for dinner and the check to the cable company might bounce and she has to run back out again before choir practice because she forgot to get paper towels the day before.  Dad gets home from work, flops in front of his computer and starts laughing at a silly dog video.  Who are you going to ask about sleeping over Fred’s house tonight?  Right?  No contest.

Ask Mom and the volcano is erupting all over you and you’re grounded for a week for blinking.  Ask Dad and he’s like, cool, want me to drop you off, glances towards the banging in the kitchen, maybe before dinner tonight?  Let’s get out of here!

Well, maybe Dad really is gentle and he volunteers to help Mom – yeah, like that’s going to go well!

When people have allowed themselves to become anxious, the anxiety becomes fueled by their need to continue the anxiousness.  It’s not a vicious cycle, it’s a vacuum sucking up every excuse under the sun to NOT calm down, NOT relax.  Ever try to help someone who in a fit of total frenzy over everything that’s happening to them being horrible and inescapable and totally out of control?  “Calm down,” yea, that’s what we all say first, “It’s going to be all right.”

Then when we get our ears back from the screaming fit about how it’s not going to be all right and we’re all gonna die – especially you, first, because you’re not getting just how inexplicably horrible life is right at this juncture . . . we start backing away slowly, then turn at our first chance and run.  Well, some of us are stupid and try a bit longer, get our heads bit off and then retreat to a short ways away and try praying.

But you can’t unfreak a person enjoying the tail of anxiety as it builds up into it’s own personal cyclone of disaster.  You can almost see the glee sparkling in the corner of their eye as they are validated by something actually truly going wrong before your eyes!  They don’t want to be rescued.  They want to break something.  Scream.  Make everyone else around them suffer as badly as they are suffering now.

That’s why you need to hang on to that gentleness concept.  Once you let yourself get anxious, gentleness is all but a goner and someone’s going to get their eye poked out.  (“See I told you bad things were going to happen!  I’m so validated!”)

Like LOVE, Gentleness is a choice.  You have to commit yourself to the concept and then rely on the Holy Spirit to show you where you’re not gentle and where you could use a little bit more of it.  Once you start trying to be gentle, I’m betting you’ll be surprised by how many different ways you are not gentle – with your family, with your friends, with your pastor, your neighbors, your  – well, you get the picture.

I would recommend starting with your spouse and your kids.  But really, start with your spouse.  They’re the people you’re suppose to be supporting, working alongside, building up and making sure they are provided for and are healthy, happy, and understood.  (I know, it’s a foreign concept to most of us, but trust me, that IS what we are suppose to be doing for our spouse!)  I’m betting most of us will discover that we are actually gentler with the person at the check out counter than we are with our spouse.

Some of us even believe (subconsciously, okay?  Let’s go with that!) that our spouses are there for cushioning our blows, letting us kick off steam in a “safe” environment, giving us someone to rant at and let it all out.  I strongly disagree.  Your spouse should feel like you are their biggest champion.  If they fail at something, you’re the one saying, “It’s okay.  I know we don’t have twelve hundred dollars to fix that, but God will provide.  We’ll manage.  C’mon Honey, you need an ice water.  Let me rub your neck.”

“To love and to cherish, right?  In good times and bad times.  With or without cable.  Whether the grass is an inch or scythe level for cutting.  When they are a total jerk or bring you flowers just because.”  To be clear, sometimes those are the same in certain past lives for some certain unnamed households . . . (mine?, okay, mine.)

We are human.  We are going to fail.  We are going to disappoint.  Do things that cost us money – jobs – cars – convenience – health.  How the people around us react towards us when those things happen are crucial to us surviving those events.

God calls us to enable everyone around us to survive – with joy.  If we let anxiety turn us into pit bulls on steroids (or dobermans if you cherish pit bulls) then we have no joy, and we aren’t kind to anyone around us.  We are forgetting that the Lord is near.

The Lord is near, folks.  He’s near!  Rejoice!  Don’t let anxiety trap you into it’s cycle of pain and cause you to lash out at everyone around you.  Choose to be gentle.  Choose.  Remember everyone around you is just as precious in God’s eyes as you are.  I think that’s kind of what He meant about doing unto others as we would have them do unto us.

We’ve all done something stupid (Say we walked one way while looking in the other direction and carried a large slurpy right into someone’s chest) and gotten the “What were you thinking you blankety blank blank blank!!! Geesh!  Told that train to just pass on by, did yah?”  But how many of us have had someone say, “Hey, don’t worry about it.  I did almost the same thing last week.  It happens.  I didn’t even like this shirt.  I’ll be fine.  Are you okay?”    I have seen it.  But rarely.  It’s a lost art to be gentle.  But I think it’s exactly what Christ is to us twenty-four seven.

We ignore Him, disappoint Him, turn our backs on Him, take Him for granted and when we finally get something and look to Him for acceptance, He’s right there with open arms and encouragement to walk through whatever it is right at His side.  He is not the accuser.  He is the forgiver.  The understanding One.  The One who said, if I die, you get to live, so I CHOOSE to die.  He didn’t want to.  No one wants to be beat up, made fun of, stripped publicly and hung on a cross.  But He didn’t have to do that.  He CHOOSE to do it, so we would have the chance to be reconciled to God.

So I figure, if He can CHOOSE to do that, I can CHOOSE to be gentle.  Consider others as better than myself.  Say a kind word, on purpose, even if the person is a jerk.  Forgive.  I could be mistaken, but I think it all falls into place when we start to CHOOSE to be gentle.  I’m so grateful the Lord God Creator chose to be gentle with me.  I’ll keep trying to work it in to my repetoire.

How about you?  My challenge?  Try it consciously for ONE DAY.  See how easy it is . . . NOT! and then decide.  Will I let anxiety rule me and step all over people or will I start now, and CHOOSE to become gentle.  Always.  (And you can’t pick and choose who – you have to be gentle with everyone.  Yes, even him.)

PS – Gentle people scare me.  I figure it’s not a natural thing and while I am appreciating the nowness of their gentleness, I am always waiting for that final shoe to drop and I make them explode.  But the few people I know who are genuinely gentle?  They aren’t savoring up all the anxiety inside until they explode, they are simply trusting Jesus and choosing to be gentle, to let it all go, because they KNOW God’s got their back!

And I thank them.  Profusely.  (So far I’m up to two people I know who are genuinely gentle . . . working on me to be the third – how many do you know?)

Seriously.  I want to know how many.  (If it’s more than five, I think your definition of gentle needs an adjustment!  Or you’re just kidding me – right?)

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, self-control, gentleness . . . it’s a package deal, folks.  Let’s start living it!