Fruitful Contemplations: Faithfulness

These are jambu fruit, which in Asia are called rose apples, wax apples, water apples and a variety of other names. Plant name syzygium samarangense. In the tropical fruit family I'd say that they symbolize faithfulness, because our backyard jambu tree was always faithful in producing these fruit, whether we valued them or not.

But the fruit of the Spirit is...faithfulness. Gal 5:22

Stories of faithfulness have always drawn me. In my childhood there was the poignant story of Greyfriars Bobby, the terrier who guarded his deceased owner's grave for 14 years, until his own death. Since then I've been inspired by others.  There's the story of Mother Theresa, serving the poor of Calcutta despite her own depression and doubts about God. Then there are stories of lesser-known saints, saints I've known in my life. Miss Hale was a Baptist missionary in China until that country closed to her, after which she provided a home for outcast women in northern Malaysia at a place she called "Bethel Hill."  And there are several theologians connected to my school who have remained faithful to God despite tragically losing their young daughters, one to murder by a stranger, one to accidental drowning, and one to pancreatic cancer.

The common thread in all of these stories of faithfulness seems to be devotion despite hardship. With the exception of Greyfriars Bobby, all of these individuals determined to follow their moral compass and their convictions despite difficult circumstances they couldn't understand. That shouldn't surprise me; "faith" is the root word of "faithfulness," and faith is defined as remaining trustful even when there is not enough proof or evidence to support that trust.

As I have considered the word "faithfulness" for the past week, I've been surprised at how often I've heard it, or some version of it, in everyday conversation. Faithfulness is more important to good living than we think. It denotes solidness, commitment, unwavering determination to follow a vision, and a certain level of peace infusing the one who is being faithful. 

It's a comforting word, a good word: He is a faithful worker. She is a faithful friend. Husband's faithfulness in loving me through thick and thin makes home a "little heaven on earth" for me. Jayne's faithfulness in blogging every day is a huge blessing to me when I get up in the mornings.  I am prepared for my big, important meeting on Monday because of my assistant's faithfulness in making sure all my materials have been put together and the groundwork done. My mother faithfully prays for me. And so on. A person who demonstrates "faithfulness" is someone you can depend on.

You wouldn't think of this right away, I'll wager, but those who are faithful and dependable are the ones who sneak into our hearts and make us a tad bit emotional when we think of them.  Faithfulness is not a a common quality to come by, and therefore, in the economy of fruit of the spirit, it's really precious.

One summer I decided to head for Europe with a friend, the mother of one of my students. The student was off seeing her father, so Sylvia and I headed for Scandinavia, with a side trip down to see my relatives in Holland. Upon hitting Amsterdam, Sylvia got culture shocked, although I didn't realize it. My attention was happily turned toward reconnecting with my relatives when we got to Rotterdam. The next morning Sylvia woke up and told me she was going to head for Norway, where her ex-boyfriend happened to be hanging out. Off she went to the train station, and I was left on my own, a bit peeved at her unfaithfulness to our plans to travel together...and a bit lonely.

I hopped a train for Paris, which had been our original plan. I'd never seen Paris before, and spent a few days there hiking all over the city, seeing museums and landmarks, and dodging the occasional Japanese tourist asking me to spend the evening with him. One evening I climbed the stairs up a steep hill to Sacre Coeur, a cathedral with unusual-looking towers. I stepped in the doorway and heard a choir singing. Moving deeper into the church and finding a pew, I realized it was an American youth choir, and they were singing the hymn, "Great Is Thy Faithfulness."

Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father;

There is no shadow of turning with thee;

Thou changest not, thy compassions they fail not;

As thou has been, thou forever wilt be.

Great is thy faithfulness!  Great is thy faithfulness!

Morning by morning new mercies I see.

All I have needed thy hand hath provided;

Great is thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Suddenly, hearing that great old hymn, the tears started to flow. I might be alone in a new city, my friend may have left me, I might have a million questions about my life and my dreams coming to fruition, but God's faithfulness to me is dependable.  I knew that for sure in that moment, in a way that has stayed with me ever since.

Which brings me to my last thought. 

Since living in the Spirit produces godly fruit in us, one of the characteristics of living in the Spirit is Faithfulness. God is faithful, so I, too, am called to be faithful. Our lives rarely turn out the way we hope or expect them to turn out, and we often disappoint ourselves more than anyone else. But in the end, we can hope that those who follow us and those who look at our lives in the judgment day will conclude that although we weren't perfect, we were faithful.

There's a song that I first heard sung by Steve Green, which expresses well my own desire to be faithful; it's been running through my head all week, and I couldn't end this post with anything less than the lyrics:

We're pilgrims on the journey of the narrow road,

And those who've gone before us line the way

Cheering on the faithful, encouraging the weary,

Their lives a stirring testament to God's sustaining grace.

Surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses

Let us run the race not only for the prize;

But as those who've gone before us, 

Let us leave to those behind us

The heritage of faithfulness passed on through godly lives.

Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful!

May the fire of our devotion light their way!

May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe,

And the lives we live inspire them to obey.

Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful!

After all our hopes and dreams have come and gone,

And our children sift through all we've left behind,

May the clues that they discover and the memories they uncover

Become the light that leads them to the road we each must find.

Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful!

May the fire of our devotion light their way!

May the footprints that we leave lead them to believe,

And the lives we live inspire them to obey.

Oh, may all who come behind us find us faithful!

Fruitful Contemplations: Goodness

If thousands of ants like them so much, rambutans must be the epitome of pure goodness!  I personally like the eaten cold out of the fridge, lying on a couch under a ceiling fan set to high speed, with the sweet rambutan juice trickling down my throat as I roll the fruit around in my mouth before chewing.  

The fruit of the spirit is ... goodness.  Gal. 5:22

"Goodness" is such an interesting word, one that advertisers have discovered in recent years: "Gooey chocolatey goodness." "Goodness that melts in your mouth."  It's getting popular--or maybe it already is popular and I'm just late as usual--to refer to the pleasantly delicious things in life as the noun, "goodness."  "I'm going to bake my bread with whole-grain goodness!" "This smoothie is packed with fruity goodness!" Goodness has become quite popular.

And there are common exclamations that use the word: "Goodness, gracious!" "Oh, my goodness!" "Goodness me!"  "Thank goodness!" "For goodness sake!" Often the word "goodness" in these phrases is a stand-in for "God," but sometimes not.

Parenthetically, I was brought up to "not take the name of the Lord in vain," which meant that we didn't refer to God in an exclamation. It felt like we were scooting a little too far over the line to even say "Oh, my goodness!" God is so far above, beyond, and around us, as I understood the message of those around me, that we mustn't even get close to using His name lightly about some passing thing in our temporal lives.I still agree with that perspective--Goodness is Godliness, and therefore must be spoken of with reverence.

But how is it that we know what "goodness" is?  What exactly is this "Goodness" as a fruit of living in the Spirit?

I've gotten stuck on this whole topic of goodness, which is why I haven't continued with this series for a while.  I've thought about it, poked around online to see if I could get a handle on it, listened to people mention it in the daily doings of my life. No luck. Goodness isn't making herself known.

I thought of consulting with C.S. Lewis, whose writing is working really well for me these days.  C.S. Lewis believed in goodness. One of his more famous quotes is, "Badness is only spoiled goodness."  Well then, goodness should be pretty easy to find. But C.S. Lewis also came up with the following:  "No man knows how bad he is until he tries very hard to be good."  That fit in more with my train of thought as I kept an eye open for goodness. Goodness is generally admired and assumed to exist, but is very, very hard to find.  Let me explain.

I do best with examples. So in my typical way, I stopped to think about people I know who personify Goodness.  They ought to be all around us, right?  The Spirit is active in this world, and goodness is a fruit of the Spirit.

Hmmmm. While I'm able to identify what would be "chocolatey goodness" and "fruity goodness" and even "whole-grain goodness," I was unable to think of anyone I could identify as "human goodness" or even "godly goodness." Every example that crossed my thoughts was a "yes, but..." Yes, he speaks well, but...  Yes, she thinks of others and does kind acts, but...  Yes, she's a calm and able leader, but... Yes, he inspires me when he's leading in worship music, but...  And considering myself as a possible example, I can pinpoint more "yes, buts" than with anyone else.

To rebut C.S. Lewis, badness may be only spoiled goodness, but every goodness on this earth has some "spoil" to it.

So I'm back to a big fat zero on the topic of Goodness. Living in the Spirit is supposed to produce it, but no one personifies it.

Wait! There it is. Maybe I was asking too much in trying to find something or someone who personifies Goodness. Maybe my ever-present longing for idealism to become reality in this world has been getting in my way. Jesus said, "No one is good--except God alone."  (Luke 18:19) And then He proceeded to offer the analogy of a camel trying to pass through the eye of a needle, showing the impossibility of truly personifying Goodness.

Here's my thesis:  I think we have to be satisfied with little glimpses of goodness, born as the fruit of living in the Spirit. Some will bear more "goodness" fruit than others, I suppose, just as some bear more love, joy, peace, or patience than others. But the glimpses of goodness provide glimpses into the heart of God.

Those times when someone is good to me, or I am good to someone else, are quick little indications of God at work in this world as we wait for things to someday be set right. When someone chooses to give another person the benefit of the doubt, that's a glimpse of goodness. When someone stops to write and send a note of encouragement, that's a glimpse of goodness. When someone chooses the tough and steep road of integrity instead of the easy way out, that's a glimpse of goodness. When someone chooses to respond to difficult life circumstances with an attitude of looking for the positive, that's a glimpse of goodness.  When someone is able to look beyond their own pain and care for others around them, that's a glimpse of goodness.  And you could, I imagine, add your own examples to these.

Watch today for glimpses of goodness peeking out from people around you, and perhaps even from your own interactions.  Those are the fruit of the Spirit, and they can give us courage and hope in the midst of a world where so much is spoiled.

Fruitful Contemplations: Kindness

The fruit of the spirit is ... kindness.  Gal. 5:22

One of the best comfort foods I know of is banana bread. Toasted. Eaten warm with butter melted onto it. Smelling like you're nibbling on the warmest, fuzziest comfort in the world. A fresh banana eaten with a dab of peanut butter on each bite provides another proven comfort food, sans the drawbacks of all the sugar that goes into banana bread.

Comfort and kindness. I think they go together. The dictionary defines "kindness" as being "sympathetic," "helpful," "forbearing," and "giving pleasure or relief." Inherent in the idea and definition of kindness is the idea that the kind person is being understanding toward the person to whom they are showing kindness, or overlooking faults, unimportance, or unattractiveness.  They see an opportunity to do or say something that provides, at very least, comfort.

A parenthetical question crosses my mind right at the start of this reflection: Do you have to be a believer in God to show kindness?  (Or for that matter, do you have to be a believer to demonstrate any of the fruit of living in the Spirit?) This may be controversial, but I don't think the Spirit asks, "Do you believe?" before working in a person's life. Plenty of people don't believe in God, or at least don't know whether God exists or not, but they understand the sadnesses of the human condition and show great kindness. Referring back to my post on Joy, I picture of the Spirit of God coming and going as the breeze, cooling the sweaty foreheads and livening the air around anyone along the way who cares to be aware. I suspect we humans can't define the work of the Spirit very well, except to say that God's Spirit helps us to know Him in some way that we don't know Him otherwise. I think that's why we see real acts of kindness in all kinds of unexpected places, coming from all kinds of unexpected people.

In "noodling about" online as I considered the concept of kindness, I wondered whether the word "kindness" was used anywhere in the gospel writers' stories about Jesus. I was surprised to find that in the record of his life, Jesus never used the word, "kindness."  Neither did those who wrote about his life. It appears not even once. That's a curious thing. I wonder why?

As I considered kindness as a fruit of living in the Spirit, I asked myself, "When have I seen or known of kindness in action?" I have seen it in a friend who baked bread every week for a family with three teenage girls whose 42-year old mother was dying of pancreatic cancer. I have seen kindness in my Thai brother as he stopped on the street to give a few baht and gentle words to a beggar. I have seen it in an employee who dropped by the presidential office to give his boss an encouraging word during a tough time. I have seen kindness in the children in my classroom who pooled items in their sack lunches to share with a classmate who had forgotten to pick up her lunch on the way out of the house that morning.  I have seen kindness in a young woman who stayed after my home Bible study group to listen, share with and put her arm around another young woman who had shared about a painful situation in her life.

Kindness is often misunderstood, or at least I think the word is somewhat misapplied.  It has been popular in recent years to urge people to do "random acts of kindness."  Our local Christian music radio station ran a Random Acts of Kindness Week during which they urged listeners to carry out these random acts, and then call in their anecdotes telling what happened. One popular choice for listeners, as I listened to the stories, was to pay for the order of the person coming behind them at a drive-through eatery or coffee vendor. Is paying for someone else's order "kindness"? I believe not. It's generosity, which is a lovely action, but generosity is not exactly the same as kindness. Think about it.

Kindness is a response to someone who is in a one-down situation.  Kindness may be combined with generosity, but it also means helping someone who is in need (whether they know it or not) of sympathy, in need of help, in need of understanding, in need of someone who will forbear with their socially unacceptable behavior.

So let's not buy someone in the car behind us a Starbucks latte and call it an act of kindness. Let's call it generosity, and then go on to drop off a fresh-baked loaf of banana bread with a half hour spent listening and chatting with a recently widowed neighbor down the street who is feeling deep loss and loneliness.

See the difference? Now go download that delicious banana bread recipe from recipezaar, get baking and deliver it hot to someone who needs to receive kindness today!

Fruitful Contemplations: Patience

What fruit best symbolizes patience? Well for me, eating a pomegranate takes lots of patience. So much so, that I typically will not buy and eat a pomegranate.

The fruit of the Spirit is ... patience.  Gal. 5:22

"Patience is a virtue."  I've heard or read that phrase many times in my life. Patience is not a virtue that I naturally possess, nor that I have cultivated in my life. When I get a new appliance, I use it without reading the manual. When I hear a song I like and want, I immediately download it from the internet. When I get a new e-mail in my box, I look right away and see who sent it and what it's about. When cookies come hot out of the oven, I burn my mouth tasting the first one before they cool. When I plant tomatoes, I water them today and want to harvest them tomorrow. My patience dysfunction is almost so bad that if I'm cooking one-minute oatmeal, I want to take it off the stove at half a minute.

Patience is highly rated, and I would agree with those who do so ... for the most part.  I do think there are a few situations in life where impatience is healthier and godlier. I believe it is righteous to be impatient about helping someone in need.  I believe it is righteous to be impatient about expressing appreciation the minute you think of doing so.  I believe it is righteous to be impatient about immediately taking action to set things right once you realize that there is interpersonal strife building between you and a loved one. I believe it is righteous to be impatient about speaking up against injustice.

Back to patience as we usually think of it, though. According to Merriam-Webster, "Patience" has some interesting definitions:  (1) Bearing pains or trials calmly or without complaint, (2) Manifesting forbearance under provocation or strain, (3) Not hasty or impetuous, (4) Steadfast despite opposition, difficulty or adversity, and (5) able or willing to bear.  The etymology of the word comes from the Latin and Greek words related to "suffering."

I am amazed at the biblical characters who had patience. How did Abraham have patience for so many years while awaiting the fulfillment of the promise that he would have a son with Sarah?  How did David remain so patient when he could have, on many occasions, knocked off Saul and fulfilled the promise of the prophet that he would become the king?  How did Isaiah have enough patience to maintain faith that a messiah would come? How did Anna have the patience to sustain her hope that she would see the messiah before she died?  When I reflect on the individuals in the Bible who demonstrated patience, I recognize again the flimsiness of my own abilities to produce the fruit of patience. (That's probably an indication that I need to do a better job of living in the Spirit.)

Patience, as I usually use the word, denotes waiting or endurance. But simply waiting or putting up with something isn't patience. It's more than that. You have patience when you are waiting or enduring with hope or expectation.  Patience assumes that eventually, something different will happen than the state you are currently in. So patience can look like all of the following:

• I will read the manual now, so that when I use my new oven I will do it knowledgeably and get better results.
• I will wait for the cookies to cool, so that when I do have a cookie, I will not burn my mouth and I will have a more enjoyable eating experience.
• I will water my tomatoes daily, week after week, because eventually I will reap a delicious harvest and enjoy my fresh garden tomato sandwiches.
• I will endure hardship or illness now, knowing that eventually God will make all things right.
• I will wait until God brings the opportunity to fill that leadership role, because if I don't try to push my way into it now, I will be more ready to do it well when the right time comes.
• I will continue to give a soft answer to this bully in my life, in faith that eventually he will respond by treating me in better ways.
• I will continue applying for jobs and maintaining a positive outlook, because I trust that eventually I will get a good one.

As I consider what I have written, I recognize that Patience in action is not necessarily a choice.  But patience in attitude is indeed a choice.

For example, the family of a man deployed overseas in the military has no choice but to behave in patient ways, waiting for the deployment to end. They can't make the time go faster, and they cannot bring him home early. But they can, as hard as that may be, decide to have an attitude of patience in how they go about their daily activities. Military families have developed a number of strategies for this, none of which--I imagine--are perfect.  But they help.  

Or for another example, a woman waiting for "that man" to show up in her life may have no choice but to wait, aside from of course putting herself in places where she can meet a variety of men.  But she can choose to have an attitude of patience in the way she enjoys her life as a single person and speaks positively and peacefully about the things of her life.  That attitude presumes that this waiting time is worth it, and that all will be well in a life lived on God's timetable.

Patience can deliver rewards. Not always, but often. An attitude of patience, I believe, will always produce rewards in some way.  

So my thought as I tie up these reflections is actually a question for both me and my readers:  What is the Spirit calling you to have patience about in your life right now?

Fruitful Contemplations: Peace

The starfruit seems like a very peaceful fruit to me, with a pleasant, light flavor. And the star seems an appropriate symbol of peace.

The fruit of the Spirit is ... peace. Galatians 5:22

Peace. The word was the topic of my afternoon yesterday. We visited Amish country (Shipshewana, to be exact) in northern Indiana. Spending a few hours among the rolling fields and patches of forest, silos and large barns, people in simple dress, bicycles and buggies pulled by proud, high-stepping horses--it was a peaceful place to be.

The Amish, the Hutterites and the Mennonites all descended from the Anabaptists ("re-baptizers") of the 16th century.  Their beliefs were registered in 1527 in the Schleitheim Confession, which outlined their beliefs thus:

• Baptism is for those who have repented of their sins and wish to reform; therefore infant baptism (a practice followed by the Catholic church) is rejected by Anabaptists.
• Those who have called themselves followers of Christ but have fallen into sin shall be admonished privately twice, and then once publicly, and if they still don't repent, they shall be excommunicated (banned).
• Those who have been baptized are to celebrate the breaking of bread and drinking of wine together (communion) in remembering the sacrifice of Jesus.
• Those who have chosen to walk in obedience to Christ are to be separate from those who have not. 
• Pastors are appointed to be leaders in the church.
• Anabaptists are to follow in the footsteps of Jesus by neither using weapons, nor holding public office.
• Anabaptists are not to swear an oath, and are to keep their speech simple.

The Anabaptists were sorely persecuted for their faith, since their beliefs were threatening to the practices of the Catholic church. Many, many of them were put in dungeons to starve, tortured, burned at the stake and drowned.  Over time, waves of these people emigrated to North America in search of a place where they could practice their faith freely, without threat to their lives and well-being.

We visited the Mennohof, a visitor center for getting acquainted with the Amish and Mennonite beliefs and practices.  It was fascinating and inspiring, seeing the commitment of the descendants of the Anabaptists (as different as the branches are from one another) to family and community, community service, and peacemaking.

There were two stories that especially stuck in my mind, illustrating the commitment of the Anabaptist descendants on Peace. One had story, actually about Quakers, was posted on a wall, with part of the story behind a door out of which was hanging a latchstring. From this website, you can read the same story:

One of the Friends moved westward to a little frontier settlement called Cincinnati. One time the rumor was spread that Indian bands were on the warpath. The settlers moved into the fort and armed themselves to fight the Indians. This particular Friend didn't go to the fort for he said he was a man of peace and wanted to follow after things which make for peace. He would simply trust in God and stay in his cabin with his wife, even though they had no gun with which to defend themselves. 

In those days the doors of log cabins were fastened on the inside with a latch. A string was attached to the latch and was pushed through a little hole in the door. From that comes the expression, "the latch-string is on the outside." 

One night the husband pulled the latch-string through the hole to the inside before retiring. He and his wife spent several sleepless hours and finally he said, "It just doesn't seem as if we are trusting God when we pull the latch-string in." So the man got up and pushed the latch-string through the hole again to the outside. 

Later in the night they heard the war whoops and savage cries of the Indians. Soon the Indians began to creep up to their cabin. One Indian tried the door and it came open. In his amazement he stopped and then withdrew and called all the other Indians to the edge of the woods for a conference. The man and his wife watched them from the window. The didn't know whether the Indians were deciding to take them as prisoners or to kill them. After a short time one of the Indians who appeared to be the chief arose and walked toward the cabin with a white feather in his hand. He fastened the feather to the door and the Indians left. 

The man and his wife allowed that feather to hang there for a number of years, and later a friendly Indian told them that the feather meant "This is the house of a man of peace, do not harm." He said the Indians knew that if a man would leave his door open to welcome the stranger in the night that he must be a man of peace and one who should not be harmed.

I loved that story! Not all the stories where someone committed to peace and Christlikeness, though, turned out so well.  The story of Dirk Willems has stuck vividly in my memory ever since I first visited the Mennohof about eight years ago (as told in The Martyrs' Mirror).

Willems, an Anabaptist, was captured and imprisoned in a residential palace belonging to the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands.  He escaped and was headed toward a pond with the palace guard in hot pursuit. Willems made it safely across the thin ice covering the pond, but the lead pursuer fell through. The hapless man's fellow guards, fearful, did not try to help save his life. The man's cries for help reached the ears of the fleeing Willems.

In that split second, Dirk Willems had to make a decision.  Should he keep running, or should he risk his life to save a man who intended to capture and kill him?  What would you have done?

Willems turned around and successfully pulled his pursuer out of the icy water, saving his life. The guard then seized Willems and delivered him to the authorities.  Dirk Willems was burned at the stake. One account I read said that the wind was blowing that day, which blew the flames away from the top of his body, leaving him to die a more excruciating death than most who died at the stake. The Martyr's Mirror says that "he was heard to exclaim over seventy times, 'Oh my Lord, my God!'"

I can't even imagine paying that kind of price for my beliefs, and for the decision to save a fellow human being's life!

This is where I think the fruit of living in the Spirit gets rather feisty. Love is a happy thing, Joy is a happy thing, but Peace? I think peace comes with courage, hardship, willingness to face the enemy and stay engaged in kindness, ... and I think it comes with fear, too. How could all of those Anabaptists not have experienced fear as they chose Peace? How do you face violence, intrusion, threat, bullying and all other kinds of ill treatment without feeling fear?  How do you stay so committed to peace that you refuse to take up arms--of whatever type--against the enemy? How do you summon some kind of understanding that allows you to make them welcome, to save them from the icy waters, even if they proceed to burn you to death?

I just have to shake my head. Only something as godly and miraculous as living in the Spirit can produce this kind of fruit.

But the Counselor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my name, will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you. Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.  Luke 14:26-27