November 9, 2012
“But the fruit of the Spirit is
love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness
and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Galatians
5: 22-23
I have struggled lately with the fruit
in my life. And because I am so analytical, it has crossed my mind several
times in the last few weeks to make a report card of sorts for myself, in order
to measure “how full” of the Spirit I am. I mean, as Christians, don’t we want
to know 1) that we are full of the Spirit and 2) how full of the Spirit we
actually are?
I thought I did. Especially as these
words were told by others toward me – words like patience, kindness,
gentleness, love. The more I heard them from different people describing me,
the more I started to think: “You know what, I am pretty loving and I do bring
joy to others. I am peaceful and patient, kind, good, faithful and gentle (I
always stopped short of self-control, even at my worst I am not that self-righteous!)”
Then I had a conversation with a dear
friend, when I was nearly in tears, because I told her that I did not see fruit
in my life. I felt as though I had been so self-absorbed that, even if I had
been rightly pursuing Christ in my life, the fruit seemed absent.
“Who are you to measure your fruit,”
she said. “You are bearing fruit right here and now.”
I collapsed in my heart because I knew,
as much as I wanted to make a score card for myself, to try and put checks in
the boxes as to whether I have been each of those characteristics in my life
each day, she was right, in both regards.
Who am I to measure my fruit?
And, I am bearing fruit.
A theme of my recent faith lately has
been that of dispelling the notion of works earning anything in my faith. I
don’t know where it has come from in me, but I am grateful that God is humbling
me daily and showing me more and more where this works-based mentality has
infiltrated every aspect of my life. It is control - my dreaded “four-letter
word” – in which I think if I can only try harder to produce fruit in my life,
then good fruit will be produced. After all, Jesus loved speaking about trees
and their fruit (Luke 6:44, Matthew 7: 16, Matthew 12: 33, to name a few). Each
Christian should strive to be the tree that produces good fruit, right?
So as I work to try and bear fruit,
desiring to prove (to whom, I wonder) that my life as a Christian is as it
should be, I find that my thoughts of measuring my fruit are only taking away
from that which God has called me to, as a follower of Christ: to know Him
more, and to be more like Him.
When it is all said and done, a
blueberry could not describe its color to a strawberry, nor could you or I do
much better. A blueberry could not look at a strawberry and say, “Well I am
this shade of blue or that,” any more than the strawberry could describe itself
in terms of the color red. Their colors are simply the product of their
existence. Strawberries are red and blueberries are blue. And even if I tried
to measure and describe two different shades of red or blue, would you even
know what I was talking about?
“It was a blue like the ocean at
sunrise.”
To which you might say, “The Pacific
Ocean or the Atlantic Ocean? “
“The Atlantic of course!”
“Well am I on the water looking back
over land, or on land looking over the water? And are there clouds?”
The process would go on endlessly until
we just decided that blue was blue.
I do not believe God intended us to be
able to measure the fruit of the Spirit in and of ourselves. Nor do I believe
that He intended us to be able to measure ourselves against others. Each of us
comes as our own shade, indescribable in words to any other, except to the
Creator who is not bound by words, and who knows us so much more intimately.
Paul concludes Galatians Chapter 5 by
saying, “Let us not become conceited, provoking an envying each other.”
Instead of seeking to bear fruit, I am
trying instead to remain faithful to God’s charge to us through Paul in
Ephesians 5:18 be “full of the Spirit.” Which is a challenge of course because,
well, life gets in the ways sometimes…
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