Tags
Bearing fruit, Dying and rising with Christ, Fruit of the Spirit, Galatians 5:22-23, Growing in Christ, Growing in grace
Day 19: Thursday in the Third Week of Lent
Galatians 5:22-23
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. There is no law against such things.
The Spirit that calls to mind the words and deeds of Jesus, the Spirit that leads us into the fullness of truth about God and our human existence – when that Spirit governs within us, it is like one of those grape vines grafted into an ancient rootstock to produce rich and abundant fruit.
It’s not like plugging the coffee pot into the wall socket to get instant power. The image is agrarian. It takes time for things to grow. The avocado pit stuck with toothpicks and left as a third grade project on the kitchen windowsill will grow, but it will take time and good soil before the dog is licking up fallen avocados in the back yard.
“Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control,” these are the things that grow when the Spirit of God is planted within us. They need time. And water. And good soil. But they will grow. They are the fruit of dying with Christ and rising to newness of life. And they are air we will breathe in the age to come.
Gracious God,
in the waters of baptism you anointed us with your Holy Spirit.
Stir up within us your Spirit
and lead us this day in paths that are holy and true.
– A prayer for the third week of Lent
(For the reflection on this week’s theme: “Baptism & the Holy Spirit”)
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Photo: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3AGrape_of_old_vine_shiraz.jpg Verita at German Wikipedia [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html), CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or CC BY-SA 3.0 de (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/de/deed.en)%5D, via Wikimedia Commons
Holy Seasons 
