柔和

So, I've been thinking about how Jesus was meek, and I've come a few linguistic conclusions. One is that there is no current English equivalent to the Greek work πραεῖα praus. However, when I asked my Japanese husband about the work, "meek," he seemed to have a deep, immediate understanding. So his language hasn't ellipted the word. In Japanese meek is 柔和 nyuuwa. The second kanji is the character for peace. The first I had to look up. It means soft, tender, plastic, gentle. Peace, or wa, also comes up as harmony, reconciliation, respond, soften, calm, moderate, alleviate, relax, comfort, quiet. I've been thinking lately about how Jesus was prophesied in Isaiah (and repeated again in Mosiah) to have no beauty that we would desire him. There's a new painting in the Provo temple chapel--more of a folksy sort of style, with Jesus and the people of his day, and he's painted kind of mousy, very unlike the overly airbrushed painting of Christ before Pilate by Simon Dewey. I don't like the Dewey paining, because it's too cinematic, but at first I didn't like the one in the temple either, because I don't care much for folk art, but then the scripture in Isaiah came back to me. Christ was so different from King David (who was probably part of the reason the Jews expected a military Messiah). King David was showy, charismatic, handsome, strong, accomplished in poetry and the harp, a military hero. Christ was meek. But Christ is our exemplar, not David. So I wanted to know more about the quiet mystery of meekness. I'm still turning it over, thus the fragment blog... If you look up 柔和 images on google, you get some idea of what the Japanese think of meekness. https://www.google.com/search?q=%E6%9F%94%E5%92%8C&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=Se5YVcTICsG0UPLHgfgL&ved=0CB4QsAQ&biw=1366&bih=610