All sort of bizarre things are happening to me and the people close to me these days and I find myself left with two questions "What does this mean?" and "How can I display all of the above?"
You see, for the longest time I missed the part with "the fruits OF the Spirit." and I thought they were something I must do my best to display or I was not fit to bear the name Christian- Christ follower.
Every spring I have the great joy of looking at my flowers fight their way out of earth, but this year I decided to go in my garden every morning and observe their progress. Some of them look so tiny, fragile and bent in half. Yet if you give them a few days you literally see the ground split in half in the place where the tiny flower pushed its way out.
And I came to understand that displaying "love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control" has nothing to do with performance but it has everything to do with endurance. Observing my flowers everyday, I noticed that in some days they appear so fragile and bent that it almost looks painful to look at them. But my flowers don't drop to the ground, they keep pushing the earth that covered them only a month ago. They endure so they can blossom one day.
I never knew how to do that. Nobody taught me how to deal with pain in this world. It just came at me. So I helped myself, and I started to run as fast as I could and as far away as I could, because I always thought I am too tiny and too fragile to endure it. But I haven't seen any of my little flowers run away or lay on the ground and die. In the same way nobody taught me how to endure, nobody taught them how to run.
This morning I had to face a painful moment. It sprang on me out of nowhere and it felt as if it hit me in the chest. My first instinct was to put on a song to block out my thoughts and have a good cry. But I remembered my flowers and I stood put. I told my soul "I know it hurts, but it is just a wave. Stay still and let it pass over you.Not every wave is tears worthy." So, I held it together and stood in my place. I realized a few minutes later that I was peaceful and that immediately produced joy in me and brought a smile to my face.
We want to produce the fruits of the Spirit, but I realized today that perhaps we are so busy running from pain that the Spirit has no time to produce anything in us. This is because we are either busy striking back at the source of our pain, or we already leave a cloud of dust behind us in the rush to get away from it. And because we know they should be present in our life for "by their fruits you will know them" (Matthew 7:20), we either struggle to produce them on our own, or we we imitate them by trying to copy those we believe got there already. And time and time again we fail to learn the courage of enduring, of staying put when it is uncomfortable, of allowing a wave to just pass over us.
I talk a lot about warriors these days, because they fascinate me. Why? Because those who earned this name are the ones who endured the darkness of the earth covering them and day by day pushed their way out of it. They refused to run. They just sat there and allow one wave, two waves three waves of pain pass over them, until you will see them stand when facing a tsunami.
For months now I am singing a song to God called "With everything", but I didn't have a clue what I was singing. I might as well have sang to Him "With everything that's left after I cleared off from here."
We all know the verse from Psalm 46:10 "Be still and know that I am God," but we miss the first few verses from the Psalm in which it is basically being explain to us those circumstances in which we should be still:
"God is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. Therefore we will not fear though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains quake with their surging." Psalm 46:1-3)
Is it just me, or do these circumstances sound a lot like a tsunami? God could've said anything before the words "and know that I am God" and yet He said to us "Be still".
"Stay put, do not run, hang in there. Endure this earth which seems to crush you, allow this wave to pass over you, push one more time today, and I will make you a warrior whose answer in front of pain will be love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. I will make you stand even when faced with a tsunami."
"And the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast." (1 Peter 5:10)
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