On the gentleness of God:
"So God did not thunder and lighten to make Peter hear His voice. God knew that though Peter was blustering and swearing with his lips, there was dead silence in his soul. A whisper at that moment--that moment of high-strung feeling--a whisper even was not fine enough in its touch for
this exquisitely sensitive spirit; so the Lord turned and looked. A look, and that was all. But it rent his heart as lightning could not, and melted into his soul.
There is a text in the Psalms which uses the strange expression, the gentleness of God. We wonder sometimes when God is so great, so terrible in majesty, that He uses so little violence with us, who are so small. But it is not His way. His way is to be gentle.
He seldom drives; but draws. He seldom compels; but leads. He remembers we are dust. We think it might be quicker work if God threatened and compelled us to do right. But God does not want quick work, but good work. God does not want slave work, but free work. So God is gentle with us all--moulding us and winning us many a time with no more than a silent look.
Coarse treatment never wins souls. So God did not drive the chariot of His omnipotence up to Peter and command him to repent. God did not threaten him with thunderbolts of punishment. God did not even speak to him. That one look laid a spell upon his soul which was more than voice or language through all his after life. Here, then, are two great lessons--the gentleness of God, and the gentleness of the soul--the one as divine a marvel as the other.
God may be dealing with us in some quiet way just now and we not knowing it. So mysteriously has all our life been shaped, and so unobtrusive the fingers which mould our will, that we scarce believe it has been the hand of God at all. But it is God's gentleness.
And the reason why God made Peter's heart sensitive, and yours and mine, was to meet this gentleness of His.
Yes; we misunderstand God altogether, and religion, if we think God deals coarsely with our souls. If we ask ourselves what things have mainly influenced our life, we find the answer in a few silent voices which have preached to us, and winds which passed across our soul so gently that we scarce could tell when they were come or gone. The great physical forces of the world are all silent and unseen." Henry Drummond - The Greatest Thing in the World
