But the Spirit produces love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility, and self-control. Galatians 5:22-23a, GNT

 

The fruit that I buy in the supermarket these days is not nearly as tasty as those we picked from the trees of my uncle’s smallholding near Boegoeberg when I was a child – juicy Kakamas peaches, sultana grapes, so ripe and sweet that they burn your throat, big watermelons with sweet red flesh and many more.

 

The fruit of the Spirit is to me a beautiful metaphor that makes important concepts in the Bible, such as love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, humility and self-control, more understandable. The Spirit of God is working in me to produce the Boegoeberg kind of sweet fruit on my tree of life. The concept of the fruit of the Spirit is in the singular. It is not a lot of different fruits, but only one fruit. All of the things mentioned form an entirety.

 

I cannot, for example, have the fruit of peace, but am very unfriendly; there is no self-control without patience. For this test, a score of about five out of nine is considered a failure. It is either full marks or your score is zero.

 

All of these qualities are bound together by the first mentioned one – love. Love is like the skin of the fruit that holds the whole fruit together. Without love, none of the others will ever be achieved. To discuss all of these qualities would take too much time, so let’s examine one or two as an example and ask ourselves if they are visible in our lives each day.

 

How much joy do people see on my face? Do fellow workers at my company or people I meet at the sports field find me a friendly person? Can colleagues, my children or my partner see that I am in full control of myself in times of conflict? What about patience? I must confess that this is the one I find the most difficult to achieve.

 

If these things are not visible in my life, I can be sure that love will also not be visible.

 

Prayer: Thank you, Lord, for preparing the place where my tree of life can grow strong, enabling me to bear fruit for others to enjoy. Amen