Gentleness wanted

Gentleness is when you care enough to choose not to be harsh, rash, angry, or rough. Gentleness is when you know and use the best way to hold an egg or a butterfly. A gentle person knows better than to harm others, and so chooses to act in a way that does not. A gentle person does not seek to make other people angry. Gentleness may lose battles, but it helps win the overall struggles. A gentle response tends to create fewer enemies, and more friends.

The fruit of 'gentleness' isn't about being wishy-washy, indecisive, unassertive, or just plain wimpy. Instead, it's a refusal to use power to harm anyone, an unwillingness to cut and slash at people, wounding them for vengeance, spite or control. Gentleness is a desire that no harm be done. There are gentle ways to be bold, non-violent ways to stand up for what is right, and non-manipulative ways to lead and to convince. But it is not human nature to be gentle. It goes beyond 'instinct', or 'education', or 'society's influence'. We are simply not gentle creatures. Certainly not males, despite the term 'gentleman'. Males are quick with the fists and the guns. Women have historically been more gentle, but that's a relative matter; they have their own ways of being vicious and destructive. Today's world gives rewards to hostility and going to a extreme. If we are to bear the fruit of gentleness, we need the Spirit to give us the ability to be gentle when it's hardest to be that way.