July 16, 2014
Color Blind
Bill picked his first tomato
of the year and put in in the window sill to ripen a bit more. I admired the
yellow Brandywine, but he said with a sheepish laugh, “Yeah, that one I’ve been
keeping an eye on — and waiting for it to turn red.” It strikes me that many of us may be doing
something similar when we look at the Fruit of the Spirit, not only in others,
but also in ourselves. We often use the Fruit of the Spirit as a measure, or a
grade for righteousness. For instance if we lose our temper we equate it with
lacking patience and the need to pray for more patience. I’m now wondering
about a spiritual color chart and the fact that it is God assessing the
ripeness and He determines the color of the fruit in my life.
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1 comment:
Gail;
-----God alone can see clearly and deeply enough to measure the consistency of our righteousness. Of course, we too can note the more obvious differences between colors and tones. And when we see the colors off a little, prayer for correction is important.
-----The crankshaft in an engine is important. The engine won’t run without it like our lives won’t work without prayer. But we are far too prone to stop there. Neither will the engine run without pistons. Or a camshaft. God participates in our lives through prayer. But we also must participate through effort.
-----The more I think about the fruit of the Spirit, the more analogy I see. Fruit is something that grows by processes man can partly explain and partly can not even conceive. Fruit is both nutrition produced in a life as well as nutrition feeding other lives. But rarely is wild fruit much worth eating. It has taken many generations of husbandry to produce Red Delicious apples and Granny Smiths and such. And once a breed is developed, it takes man’s hand to feed and water a tree to get the best production.
-----Do we need more patience? Pray. Then work at it. Feed the patience tree and give it some water. It isn’t that God needs your help. It is that this is the way He made things to work, and only working the way He made things to work will validate your prayer.
Love you all,
Steve Corey
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