too busy (day 2)
Last Saturday my daughter and I got an early start on our garden. While the seed packets promised 8-10 days till we
began to see life, many of our seeds have already sprouted. We’re having a great time watching things begin to emerge from the tiny peat clumps. When things are young, growth is easy to spot. It’s later when things become a bit more mature that we began to question the whole growing process.
When we live too busy, as I contend many of us do, we tend to miss the growth, and we grow discouraged. One of my favorite portions of scripture is the whole “fruit of the Spirit” bit in Galatians 5: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness,faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. While there are laws prohibiting certain activities, explains the writer, you can’t go wrong if you try to live according to these.
Here’s the rub: like the tiny beginnings of my garden, which will one day produce fantastic onions, fruit grows at it’s own pace. There is another list of “gifts of the Spirit” in the bible, but the aforementioned items are simply not gifts. They’re fruit. And fruit takes awhile. Pretty easy to notice at first. Whereas you may have once been prone to blow up at your kids, the tiniest bit of patience makes a bold proclamation. It pushes it’s way up through the ground with grandeur. “Over here, Patience! Check me out!”
Of course in the time that it takes to actually produce fruit, sometimes that plant is ripped from the ground, mistaken for a weed. Situations change like the Cleveland forecast, and let’s be honest, sometimes situations affect our fruit production.
If things like love and joy and peace are heavenly plantings tended by the Spirit, join God in the field. Tend the soil. Trim the suckers. Water as needed. KILL THE JAPANESE BEETLES! (Sorry, that’s an ecological sore spot for me.) But here’s the most important thing… Ready?
Don’t use Miracle-Gro. It’s heroin for plants. Once you use it, your garden begs for it. What’s the metaphor? There is no quick-grow spirituality. God builds you into his image at his pace. There is a lot of spiritual heroin out there promising quick fixes, and sure-fire methods. Look, it works for about a week, maybe 3, but eventually you’ll think, “Hey, I’m the same jerk I was before I bought that book with only a slightly modified behavior! I’ve been duped.”
The best plant food comes from decomposing garbage. That’s right, if you want a healthy garden take a look at your junk, the coffee grounds, egg shells and banana peels. Of course in order to produce such rich compost you have to actually admit that you have some. Pile it all together and let it feed your plants. Confession is great for the garden.
Then enjoy the growing process. Watch it happen. Oh, and relax a bit; they wouldn’t be called the fruits of the Spirit if you were solely responsible for the entire process. Happy gardening.
I’ve never heard it like that before. I especially like what you said at the end; that ultimately we aren’t the only ones responsible for the process. I’ve heard a lot of talk lately among the people I talk to about such things of “working on the fruit of the Spirit”, almost always followed by their failure in achieving their goal. Your post makes me realize that this is the wrong way to go about it.
I think it’s important to note that the fruit is a product of the Spirit dwelling within us, rather than us working hard on our own. I mean, of course there are things that we can do to impede or remove impediments to the Spirit producing that fruit in us, but I don’t think deciding that for the next week I’m going to try real hard to be patient is going to give me patience in the sense that Galatians is talking about. I might be “acting” patient, but where is God in that?
Something I’ve been struggling with lately is what is the difference between me or my church and an atheist or group of atheists who are “good people”. They might be described as being kind or good; does that mean that they have fruits of the Spirit? Logically they cannot. Therefore in my mind practicing showing the fruits of the Spirit in my life isn’t going to accomplish anything lasting…as you said it will work for a week or two and then I will just get discouraged. The lasting change must come from my relationship with God, from the Spirit dwelling within me and recognizing that daily. I think the more time we spend with Him, and the more weeds we remove that might be impeding that growth (such as sin, our own flesh, etc), the more our fruit is going to grow.
Thanks for another thought-provoking blog post, Ry.
B