Gentleness

This past week I saw a beautiful thing, a man holding another man who was weeping because of the brokenness in his life. The man who was weeping had made so many wrong choices in life and now they had come back to bite him hard. The man who was holding him gently sat him down and over the next while simply listened and offered his compassion. He answered with love and gentleness, acknowledging the brokenness and even the other man's role in creating the brokenness, but he simply showed love and understanding.
For me, this is what gentleness is all about: compassion, love and support in difficult times. It doesn't mean that you ignore the other person's role in creating the difficult time, it means focusing first on the person and their need for hope, healing and understanding. It means not jumping right away to assigning responsibility or blame, but to simply being there; person to person, heart to heart, realizing that we might well be in the other person's shoes if things had turned out only slightly different from choices or decisions we've made in our own past. Gentleness is often grace in action.
Gentleness is strength and courage acting in love and grace because it's about moving towards hut and brokenness instead of away, about seeking understanding and desiring healing for someone else and being willing to be the one who brings it.
If you are looking for one area of your character to grow in the next year, I would suggest gentleness and you will be a life changer.