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How vigorously do you pursue righteousness, godliness, faith, love, endurance or gentleness? Those are the things which Paul says here mark us out as children of God. These are the things that somehow ought to be evident as the motivations of the choices we make, the words we say, of how we live our lives. The concept of pursuing gentleness is an intriguing one. In my faith education, to pursue anything meant to do so with gusto. If I was seeking after God’s will or heart, I was to do so with everything I had. Somehow this would make the eventual discovery or outcome more tangible or satisfying. If I was believing for healing, it was with every single ounce of faith I could muster, or it was worth nothing at all. Almost as if by wanting it with every fibre of my being, I made it more possible. My impression of this kind of faith life was that it was loud and demonstrative. As someone who actually prefers to be neither of those things (contrary to appearances) I increasingly found it difficult to relate to these expressions of faith.
But to pursue gentleness, or endurance, these are things that I’d like to do. It’d be easy to make some pithy point about how our world views gentleness, and claim that it equates it to weakness, but rather than being lazily generalistic, I’ll say it this way instead: in my head, I maintain what I consider to be the sinful instinct that gentle people are somehow softer, or easier get past, to overtake on the way to the top. It is a terrible character flaw on my part. I’m used to needing to be strong, at least outwardly, in order to, to a large extent, survive. I’m often jealous of people who, having lived through the same world and society that I have, manage to be gentle and content to endure rather than seeking always to better themselves. Often, these are people who celebrate the success of others, whereas I, whilst doing so, also have twinges in the back of my mind of ‘why couldn’t it be me?’. Why couldn’t it be me whose song is played in Churches all over the world? My songs are ok. Why does my writing not get as much attention as that blogger over there? I write well. I make good points. Look at me!
And all the while, I’m missing the point entirely.
Do you miss the point in the same way as me?
Commit to contentment. Be thankful. Be generous. Keep going. In all things look to God. And let the rest slide right on by.