Thoughts on a fruitful life.
There’s this passage in the New Testament that talks about the fruit of the Spirit. It’s written by the Apostle Paul.
He lays out what a Spiritually fruitful life looks like in a poetic punch-list of sorts:
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
If you ask me, that’s a list worth writing down and committing to heart.
Personally, I reverse-engineered them a few years back on a Spiritual retreat. I was meditating on how to truly get to a place of love and compassion regularly.
And this is where I landed, if you’ll give me the benefit of the doubt for the rest of this here longer-than-usual-post.
The starting place for all love has to be self-control. Right? Not getting road rage when the always-late idiot who doesn’t know how to use his turn signal cuts you off. Or refraining from throat-punching the emotionally-stunted braggart who is blinded by his ego and always has to play the one-up-you life game. I could go on, but you get my point.
Self-control is really self-care.
Remaining calm in chaos. Being the bigger person by keeping quiet. Not throwing another log on the proverbial fire. Refusing to get sucked into needless drama and petty conversation.
You know, thinking before you speak. Pausing before proceeding. That’s love in action.
Next up is gentleness, which is self-control intuitively applied. Seeing a need and meeting that need. Responding with a tender hand. Finding common ground rather than drawing lines in the sand.
Gentleness literally means to ‘be of the same clan’. Yep, can’t make this stuff up. To be a gentleman/woman is to see yourself in others and them in you. And this takes practice, patience, and intention.
Ever meet a gentle giant? They have the strength to crush you but bearhug you instead. Stop and think about that for a minute.
Okay, now we’re into the ‘how’ part.
How do we love people (and ourselves) well? The biggest thing we can do is show up. Fully.
That’s what faithfulness means.
Faithfulness is belief. It’s trust. It’s confidence. It’s tangible. Ultimately, faithfulness means being willing to do the hard thing even if it doesn’t make sense to everyone else around you.
Because, at the end of the day, faithfulness is the part of Spirituality that takes action. Day after day.
Faithfulness builds character—ours mainly. We become people who can be relied upon, which lets others know that we can be trusted and that they are safe.
And when people feel safe, they feel loved.
Which leads us straight into the beautiful Spiritual fruit of goodness. This is where the Greeks come in. Thank God for their philosophizing.
They defined something as being quote-unquote good if it was intended for its original purpose. That’s right. If something is good, it has integrity. What’s being advertised is what you get and all that jazz.
If we want to be loving, we can’t be playing hide-and-seek or dancing around pretending to be anyone but ourselves.
Authentic people are good people because they operate from a place of humility and this universally true idea that we’re all broken in some beautiful way.
As is said in recovery circles: we’re not bad people trying to be good; we’re sick people trying to get well.
Which, of course, leads to kindness—my word of the year in 2024. (Be warned, I’m going to riff on this one for a minute).
Kindness is a paradox. Kindness is free and extremely costly. Kindness is both universally practiced and contextually specific. Kindness often goes unnoticed, and it can stop you in your tracks. Kindness is a choice and an innate reaction.
The best place to cultivate kindness is with yourself.
Being kind to yourself looks like eating good food, moving everyday, getting enough rest at night, forgiving yourself when you mess up, rewarding yourself along the way when you're successful, and defining yourself by the best things about you, not the worst.
Show me someone who is kind, and I'll show you someone who is holy. Someone who is whole. Someone who knows the transformative power of pain. Someone who has been beat up by life at every turn but chose somewhere along the way to keep going anyway.
Simply put, kind souls are marked. And they mark others indelibly.
You cannot be in a hurry and be kind.
You cannot be distracted and be kind.
You cannot be isolated and be kind.
You cannot be resentful and be kind.
Kindness is a lived-forgiveness, grace in action, love on display in tangible ways.
Okay, I’m off my soapbox now.
Patience and peace are next in line, and for good reason—they go hand-in-hand.
Show me a patient person, and I’ll show you a peaceful person. And vice versa.
If you have peace on the inside, it doesn’t matter what’s going on outside.
True story.
And the subsequent fruit of that peace? Yep, you guessed it: a patient soul.
Patience in Latin means ‘to suffer’.
I’ll rewind that one more time.
Patience means to endure. To walk beside. To enter the trenches and battle together.
You probably see my punchline coming. But here it is anyway: compassion.
Yessiree.
Compassion means ‘to suffer with’.
But don’t be fooled. Compassionate people aren’t pushovers or dandelion-picking softies. Nope. True compassion isn’t afraid to take its gloves off or get dirty.
If love is the ultimate Spiritual fruit, then we need to take a hard look at who and what we’re fighting for.
Love in action often means standing up for justice, defending the marginalized, and being a voice for the voiceless. It’s about recognizing the inherent worth in every person and acting accordingly, even when it’s inconvenient or uncomfortable.
So, what does all this mean for our daily lives?
It means making conscious choices to embody these virtues.
It means striving to cultivate each of these fruits in our interactions with others, and perhaps most importantly, in how we treat ourselves.
It’s a lifelong journey, filled with challenges and growth, but one that is deeply rewarding.
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To wrap things up, here are three questions for you to chew on:
1. Which fruit of the Spirit do you find most challenging to practice in your daily life? Why?
2. Can you recall a time when someone’s kindness or patience made a significant impact on you? How did it change your perspective or actions?
3. What steps can you take today to start cultivating more peace and gentleness in your interactions with others?
I hope these questions inspire some reflection and growth. Remember, the journey to a fruitful life isn’t easy. But every step forward is a step worth taking.
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Steve Knox | Somewhere on this spinning ball of dirt we call home
/// Like what you read? Please forward or share it with your circle of influence. Thanks as always for reading. Oh, and remember what that old dead Saint de Chardin said: ‘We’re not human beings having a Spiritual experience, we’re Spiritual beings having a human one’. Godspeed and much love.