My Garden, OR
Galatians 5:22-23 NLT
But the Holy Spirit produces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against these things!
My grandma was a stickler for finding every last ripe berry. As a kid, picking berries was pure never-ending misery. She would lift the leaves or move the branch and show me how many berries I was missing. I was not the picking type; I was more of the eating type (and in fact there are untold numbers of strawberries and raspberries that never made it into the bucket!) But now as the chief picker of the family in my own garden, I immeasurably appreciate the example my grandma set. I think too of the examples that Jesus set for us. While in earthly form, Jesus was a walking, talking, living, breathing example of what His Spirit can demonstrate through each of us today. I don’t think I ever heard my grandma utter the words, “I can’t do this.” Similarly, Jesus could have said, “This is too tough, I won’t do this, Father.” Quite the opposite, Jesus loved the people trying to kill him. He was patient in His teaching, even though His disciples (and us) were slow on the uptake. The Jesus examples of joy, peace, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness are literally endless especially when thinking of all His healing and restoration. And self-control? Turn your eyes to the cross, where He stayed nailed for us, not because of His sin for He was sinless. It was ours. But oh sure, easy for the omnipotent, supernatural Son of God to do all this, but I’m just a human! So was Jesus.
