The Daily Pearl
On Gentleness
A pearl kept from the brand’s mornings: a verse to hold, a prayer to say and a word to carry.
“Let it be the hidden person of the heart, in the incorruptible adornment of a gentle and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God very precious.”
1 Peter 3 : 4
A Prayer for This Morning
Father, the world prizes the loud, and I am tempted to bid for its attention. Cultivate in me the hidden person of the heart. Let my gentleness be strength that has stopped needing witnesses.
Affirmation
My gentleness is not the absence of strength; it is strength at rest, and heaven prices it above jewels.
The Reflection
In the sight of God very precious: the older translation says of great price, and it is the same market language as the merchant's pearl. Scripture prices exactly one adornment at that level, and it is not visible. A gentle and quiet spirit is called incorruptible for the same reason nacre outlasts fashion; it is not applied to the surface, it is the substance.
Gentleness has a poor reputation among the ambitious, who mistake it for the absence of force. It is closer to the mastery of force. The gentle woman is not the one who cannot press; she is the one who no longer needs to. Quietness of spirit is not having nothing to say. It is having nothing to prove.
In Her Company
St Thérèse of Lisieux
The Little Flower, whose little way turns unnoticed gentle acts into great love. Nothing she did was extraordinary except the love in which she did it.
Thérèse Martin (1873 to 1897) entered the Carmel of Lisieux at fifteen and lived hidden there until her death at twenty-four. Her memoir, Story of a Soul, taught the little way: the smallest things done with complete love. Canonised in 1925 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1997, she promised to spend her heaven doing good on earth.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
The Wardrobe