Why Not Broccoli of the Spirit?

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Fruit of the Spirit.
Why fruit, I wonder. Why not vegetables or meat? What is different about fruit?

Let's see--think of them.
Oranges full of oil and fragrance,
apples shiny and firm that crunch in response to our bite,
berries dark and fragile,
peaches that lie perfectly in the palm and so ripe that their juice runs down my arm.

Sweet, lush, over-the-top good.
Fruit.
Does their very excess connect them to the Spirit of God?
Maybe. But maybe it's something else.

Unlike vegetables that need repeated planting and cultivating, unlike meat that needs breeding and tending, fruit just comes. Plant a tree or bush once and it bears repeatedly for years. After the first year, even if I don't prune or spray, it bears. All I have to do is pick it--reach out my hand and pull it off, ripe and warm from the sun.
Like manna.
Like fishes and loaves.
Reach out and possess God's immediate gift, a glimpse of Himself.

Then the Lord said to Moses, "I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day."--Exodus 16:4

Taking the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven, He said the blessing, broke the loaves, and gave them to His disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the fragments left over--twelve wicker baskets full. Those who ate were about five thousand men, not counting women and children.--Matthew 14:19-21

Perhaps fruit lies especially close to God because fewer human hands lie between it and Him. 
Perhaps fruit, by its very nature, comes more directly from Him than any other foodstuff.
And maybe that is why fruit tastes so sweet.

It Wants to Go Straight

Thank you, God, for bringing us a teenager who we can teach how to drive.

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Really. I mean it.
Learning how to drive bears so much resemblance to learning how to live.
The techniques are, in the end, very much the same.
Look where you are going.
Watch out for the other guys.
Anticipate your next move.
Slow down for turns.

And then, after she turns a corner and overcorrects--

Just let the wheel come back on its own.
The car wants to go straight.

The car wants to go straight.
It does, you know. Just let go of the wheel and it will return to center.
Just let go and you will go the right way.
So it works for the car, but do I do that with my life? Do I know how to find the straight way by just letting go?

I will instruct you in the way you should go.--Psalm 32:8

You tell me, of course. Over and over. I know where to go because of You.
You show me the straight path and I want to walk it because You give me the desire.

Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind me saying, This is the way: walk in it.--Isaiah 30:21

You make me want to go straight.

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What God Does Not Want

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Possession is serious business to God.
The whole earth is mine.--Exodus 19:5
The silver is mine and the gold is mine.--Haggai 2:8
I own the cattle on a thousand hills--Psalm 50:10

Everything God made belongs to Him. Everything.
Because He loves us, he gives us some of it and, from that portion, we are to give some back, and thus worship and honor Him.
He is not joking about this either:
Bring the whole tithe into storehouse...and see if I will not throw open the floodgates of heaven and pour out so much blessing that you will not have room enough for it.--Malachi 3:10

He's designed a perfect system, really.
He makes stuff; He gives to us; we give back, and so on unto infinity.

But there's one catch.
Some of what we have, He does not want.
Jesus said,
Bring me a denarius. Whose inscription is this? Repay unto Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.--Mark 12:11-12
God does not want us to give Him what did not come from Him in the first place.

WAIT A MINUTE!
Doesn't everything belong to God?
Yes, it does. Everything He made.
But didn't He make everything?

Hmmm... Think about it. What you have that did not come from God?
Actually, the list is quite long:
Pride
Selfishness
Apathy
Ignorance
Poverty
Ambition
Greed

Should I go on?
As it turns out, we have plenty of things that God did not make, does not own, and does not want. We cannot ever dedicate those to Him. He will not accept them.
And His response to our attempts to do so looks like this:
Unanswered prayer
Rejected requests
Ignored pleas
Wrong turns
Trouble, trouble, and more trouble.

It's all about motive. Just ask Cain and Abel.
God says, Give back my best and I will give you even more.
Try to give what is not worthy and you will be stuck with it.

Wearing Two Faces

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Oh, God--you and your contradictions...
You tell me that life will be hard, but I will be glad.
You take away my sin, but not before you show me its full squalor.
You make me rich, but in the process, humble me down to the ground.

Because of you, I wear two faces--
One that knows your joy, and the other that knows myself and this world.

Who are you, anyway, that you must do this?

Father, Teacher, Brother, Friend, Lord, Christ, Redeemer...
Everything.

Somewhere, somehow, you must be enough.
You do not breathe your own Spirit into a handful of dust, then blow it apart, consigning it to random winds.
You, who ignite the spark of life and carefully lay out the order of the worlds, do not abandon your work to sad entropy.

I cannot make myself happy by leaning into days that flash by, swirling into time's tempest.
There is only You.
Satisfy me with your unfailing love that I may sing for joy and be glad all my days.--Psalm 90:14

Not Being Grace Kelly

Dear God, You know that I always wanted to be like Grace Kelly.
Beautiful.
Refined.
Assured.
Graceful.
But I'm not.

Instead, this is me:

No one's idea of perfect.
All dressed up, but a poor substitute for beautiful Grace.
Trying to cover up shortcomings with no luck at all.
Getting along, but excelling at nothing.
Having friends, but always trailing behind.
And smiling.
Always smiling.

What would I do without You?
You make up all my shortcomings.
You love me if I am excellent or not.
You walk beside me all my days.
You give me a reason to smile.

I love you, Lord. It doesn't matter if I don't wear a crown.
You do.

My soul does magnify the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for he has regarded the lowliness of His handmaiden. He, who is mighty, has magnified me and holy is His name.--Luke 1:47-49

The Witness Between Us

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Why are Christians always arguing among themselves?
It's almost never necessary.
Really.
But we are so sure we are right and our brothers are wrong. 
Bah.

We should have learned long ago that we don't always see things clearly.
Way back when the Israelites first divided up the promised land, and settled on both sides of the Jordan river, they did  the same thing. The people of Reuben, Gad, and half of the people of Manasseh lived separated from the others, so they built an altar there, a copy of the tabernacle where the rest of their people worshiped, so that they would not forget God's faithfulness even though they lived separately.

And what did their brothers in faith say? Did they slap them on the back and say "Good job. So happy for your faithfulness!"  No, of course they didn't.
They said:
How could you break faith with the God of Israel? How could you turn away from the Lord and build yourselves and altar against Him now?--Joshua 22:16

They didn't get it at all.
So the Reubenites and Gadites set them straight:
The Mighty One! God! The Lord! He knows! ...It is to be a witness between us and you and the generations that follow that we will worship the Lord...--Joshua 22: 22,27

A witness between us and you.
To unite, not separate them.

More often than not, the God we worship is the same God.
Our sects and denominations are not supposed to separate us. They are incidents of upbringing and location. They are different flavors of the same Living Bread.

Some people like statues and stained glass, some a bare cross.
Some prefer loud music, some stately, some none at all.
Some dunk, some sprinkle.
It doesn't have to matter.

Though separated by differences that sometimes seem as wide as the Jordan, we need not destroy one another.
I don't always agree with my husband, but we almost always present a united front to the world.
Why can't Christians do the same?
Stop nit-picking your brother and put your arms around him.
There is one body and one Spirit, even as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and Father of all--Ephesians 4:4-5

Do you see it differently?
Do our denominational differences really matter all that much?

What BFF Really Means

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I always thought that the epitome of human relationships was love.
God tells me to love and most of the time, I like doing it.
I love my husband and my children and my friends in His name.
But He also tells me to love my neighbor, who I don't always like.
Even worse, He tells me to love my enemy, who I absolutely don't like.
Now that I think about it, sometimes I want to love and sometimes I don't.
But I have to. Whether I like it or not.
And God has to love us. Loving is who He is. He can't not do it.

But that is not true of friendship.
We get to choose our friends.
And so does God.
I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father, I made known to you.--John 15:15.

Friendship is a privilege, not a command.
As we believe in and worship God, He calls us friends.
 This is not a slap-on-the-back buddy relationship, but a deep heart caring that shares and laughs and cries together. It is a relationship born of basic likenesses, deeper even than love. 

Friendship is more exclusive, reserved only for the closest of those God must love.
Love comes from God to all, but friendship, well....that is a finer thing.
BFF. Yes, I'll take that.
Thank you, Lord.