Gentleness: A Safe Place to Rest | 8/3/25
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Can you relate to the broken rocking horse story?
When have you felt like the beaten-up box, broken despite a label of “Fragile, handle with care?”
How do you typically respond to others when they are grieving or vulnerable?
Do you tend to rush in with “answers,” or offer space and gentleness
What does “reckless gentleness” look like in your daily life?
Can you name someone who has shown this kind of gentleness to you?
Why do you think Jesus chose gentleness when responding to Thomas’s doubt?
How does that challenge or affirm your image of God?
In what areas of your life do you feel called to lead with gentleness this week?
How can you prepare your heart for that?
Transcript:
Something mysterious happens almost any time I go into a store where all of the breakable pottery is out in front on full display, or at one of those really fun antique shops where all of the shelves seem to be stacked high with mountains and mountains of breakable china. No matter how hard I try to be aware of my surroundings—no matter if I have my hands in my pockets or straight down to my sides—somehow, some way, I turn into a bull that was just let loose from its cage. Something will break without me even trying. I could just look at it, and it’ll break.
There are times when I feel like the idea of gentleness seems almost foreign to us, lost to an age long ago. Gentleness feels like the opposite of everything that our society values these days. We prefer loud strength and immediate action, regardless of its consequences, rather than a slow, cautious approach with a quiet meekness often attributed to a spirit of gentleness.
And yet I believe that this fruit of the Spirit—the one that is so often overlooked—is maybe the most important of them all. Because gentleness is the bedrock, it’s the foundation on which love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness rest. So in the world we live in now, what might it look like to cultivate a spirit of gentleness for ourselves?
This morning, we look to the story of Thomas, who is often referred to as the disciple who doubts Jesus's resurrection. As you hear this story again—or maybe even for the first time—I invite you to think about and pay attention to the way that Jesus interacts with Thomas. What might it have felt like to be in Thomas’s shoes on that day?
This story comes to us from John chapter 20, verses 24 through 28:
Thomas, the one called Didymus, one of the twelve, wasn’t with the disciples when Jesus came. The other disciples told him, “We’ve seen the Lord.”
But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in his hands, put my finger in the wounds left by the nails, and put my hand into his side, I won’t believe.”
After eight days, his disciples were again in the house, and Thomas was with them. Even though the doors were locked, Jesus entered and stood among them. He said, “Peace be with you.”
Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here. Look at my hands. Put your hand into my side. No more disbelief. Believe.”
Thomas responded to Jesus, “My Lord and my God.”
This is the Word of God for us, the people of God. And we say: thanks be to God.
Will you pray with me?
Good and gracious God, meet us in this place with a spirit of gentleness, that we might hear a word from you this morning—a word that speaks directly to our hearts and our lives. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
Before I was born, my grandmother bought a rocking horse for the family, and I was the first to play with this rocking horse. It was probably my most favorite toy. When I was finally able to get up into the saddle and rock ‘til the cows came home—I loved it. I think I had more pictures with this rocking horse than any other toy.
Eventually, I grew out of it, and my younger sister Katelyn had her shot at rocking with the horse. Then one day, this beloved horse disappeared. It was intended to be a family heirloom, so I had a cousin who was just born in New York, and my parents sent this horse off to New York so she could have her turn with it.
I’d forgotten all about this rocking horse and how beloved it was until about twenty-plus years later. I was living in Sanford, North Carolina, and all alone with my newborn. Christian was maybe just a few months old when I heard a knock on the door. I freaked out a little bit because I wasn’t expecting anyone or anything.
So I opened the door, and there sat this really large box. On the box was written: “Fragile. Handle with care.” And this box—it was very clear—it was not handled with care at all. One side of it was pushed in, and there was some extra tape around a puncture hole in the cardboard where whatever was inside was sticking out.
It looked like the UPS men were playing a really difficult game of hacky sack with this really big box. And so, curious, I saw on the return label that it was from my aunt and uncle, all the way in New York. I opened it up, wondering what on earth this could be. I opened up the top of it and peered in—and I saw the rocking horse.
But it didn’t look like the rocking horse you see in this picture, because its head had fallen off. Don’t worry, I did fix the rocking horse. I got it fixed. But that poor box—how often do we feel like that beat-up box?
We wrap ourselves up the best we can with bubble wrap boundaries and plaster “Handle with care” across all of our wounds, like Band-Aids that no one ever really pays attention to. We enter into this world ready to face anything and everything—until life comes in like a reckless bull, shattering all of our expectations.
We get rejected from job after job. We feel the pressures from all sides—work, school, family, friends, home. We make one mistake that seems to be just a minor mistake, but the world turns on us. We sign on the dotted line, ending a relationship that was supposed to last a lifetime. We read headline after headline of heartbreak disguised as breaking news. We take two steps toward ringing that bell and then four steps back. We say goodbye to our forever loves way too soon.
And like that beat-up box, we are beaten to a pulp as the world uproots our sense of security and takes a sledgehammer to our hope.
I wonder if this is what it felt like to be Thomas that day. I wonder if he felt just as battered and bruised by the events that happened over the course of just a few days. He had watched as his teacher, his leader, his beloved friend, was arrested. He watched in horror as Jesus was raised up on that cross. He watched through tears of anguish as the soldiers pierced his side.
He was grieving. He was traumatized. And he was probably afraid for his life. We don’t know why he wasn’t with the other disciples to witness the first resurrection appearance of Jesus, but we can imagine that he maybe just needed some time to be alone—to process, to grieve, to put on a brave face again so that he could be strong for all of the other disciples.
If there was ever a time for Thomas’s heart to be handled with care, it was in this moment.
But his friends did the exact opposite. As Thomas approached the group, he was bombarded with a whirlwind of hope and excitement that didn’t have any place in the process of grief. Their comments of excitement seemed to be like a bull in the china shop of Thomas’s grief.
“We’ve seen the Lord! He’s alive! He was right here talking to us!”
And it was too much for Thomas to process all at once. It was impossible to comprehend, and he would not be catapulted into a state of delusion, only to be ripped apart again. That careful bubble-wrap job he did on his heart needed to stay in place. He didn’t want to be shattered all over again.
“I need proof,” he said. “I need to touch his hands, his side.”
It was almost like Thomas was begging to be handled with care.
Then Jesus shows up. Offers a word of comfort, a word of peace. And then moves toward the one who needed the most care.
Jesus did not yell. Jesus did not scold. Jesus did not belittle. He simply offered Thomas exactly what he needed to make sense of the trauma that he had experienced.
But it wasn’t enough for Jesus to simply offer his hands and his side. Thomas would have to brave a hurt heart all over again if it weren’t true. There must have been something about Jesus’s countenance that made it safe for Thomas to respond with belief—a warmth, a peace, a comfort, a familiarity, a gentleness that was missing from the whiplash of the last few days.
As Thomas was reaching for Jesus, I wonder if words from an earlier memory with Jesus flashed through his mind:
“Come to me, all who are struggling hard and carrying heavy loads, and I will give you rest.
Put on my yoke. Learn from me. I am gentle and humble, and you will find rest for yourselves.
My yoke is easy to bear, and my burden is light.”
In that moment, Thomas’s heart was handled with the utmost care. And because of that care, he was given space to process the trauma that he experienced and to step into a belief that was stronger than ever before. His heart found rest in the gentleness of Christ’s presence.
As many of you know—because you have experienced it—the idea of finding rest for a parent of an infant is almost laughable.
It was my final semester at Duke Divinity School, and I had a six-month-old Christian on my hip. He joined me for all of my classes. He also got an honorary Master of Divinity from Duke Divinity. But that was hard, because Christian, at this particular moment in his infancy, felt like he was always screaming. There was not a moment when he was quiet. There was always something he was upset about.
And so on the very first day of the semester, I was beginning a class that I had been looking forward to my entire degree thus far. It was Hebrew Storytelling with Rabbi Sager.
As I walked with Christian on my hip into the classroom—it was a rather small classroom with a big conference table right in the middle—for the first time in what felt like his entire life, he was calm. And I was so excited. I sat down in my chair as other students entered the classroom, and the rabbi walked in and sat down.
Wouldn’t you know—the moment the rabbi sat down and started class, Christian felt a type of way about it and started crying.
So I stood up and went down the list that all parents have when their babies are crying to see what would soothe him. I started the mommy-rock-burp-binky-bottle routine until, hopefully, something would happen. But nothing made him calm down.
I looked to my friend, who was taking notes, and gave her a knowing look. She nodded that she would cover for me, and I began to make my way out of the classroom. I was devastated and a little bit embarrassed. As I walked toward the door, I saw the rabbi stand up and walk to me, and he said:
“Can I try? I have what they call the ‘rabbi touch,’ but I fear that it might be a little bit out of practice. I’d love to see if I still got it.”
Something about Rabbi Sager’s countenance and invitation made me feel safe and seen and welcomed, despite my screaming child. He was gentle, and I felt like I could trust him. So I handed Christian over to him. He kept on teaching, screaming child in his ear, and everything.
And wouldn’t you know, in five minutes flat, Christian was asleep.
Thus began the friendship of Christian and the Rabbi. Every class, Rabbi Sager would ask if he could hold Christian, and I would pass him off very quickly. When Christian was old enough to start crawling, I would set him up on that conference table, surrounded by my other classmates, and he would crawl his way to the rabbi—without even being asked or invited.
“Come to me, all who are weary, all who are struggling with heavy loads, and I will give you rest.
Put on my yoke. Learn from me. I am gentle and humble. And you will find rest for your souls.”
Rabbi Sager was not someone who would profess Christ as Savior. And yet in his gentle way of welcoming my child and me, I could release the breath that I was holding. I could lean further into the person that Christ was calling me to be. And I was able to learn without hindrance.
This is the gift of gentleness. It creates space for all to find rest and to step into becoming what God has called them to be.
As people who profess faith in the risen Christ, we too are called to the work of reckless gentleness—for all people. And man, does our world need a little bit of gentleness right now.
We might never know someone’s story—who they are, where they come from, what motives they might have, what mistakes they have made in their past. But if our response, our demeanor, to every single person that we encounter, no matter what, is from a posture of gentleness, what we do is build a bridge for Christ to show up through us—to meet them exactly where they are.
Gentleness is that fruit of the Spirit that allows our pride, our insecurities, our need to be right, to diminish so that Christ might be seen in the way that we interact with the world. And so, as we do, the world experiences love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, and faithfulness—all of which flow from that spirit of gentleness that is within us.
Eknath Easwaran says it this way in his exploration of the Beatitudes in his book Original Goodness:
“To live simply is to live gently, keeping in mind always the needs of the planet, other creatures, and the generations to come. In doing this, we lose nothing, because the interests of the whole naturally include our own. In claiming nothing for ourselves, we have everything, for everything is ours to enjoy as part of the whole.”
Friends, this is the work of the Kingdom of God. This is the work that we have been invited to participate in. This is how love and goodness are restored in our world. Like Steve talked about with goodness just a few weeks ago, this is where that work begins.
By building a bridge through our gentleness, we create a safe place for everyone to experience the wholeness and the love and the rest that Christ offers and longs for us all to experience.
Thanks be to God. Amen.