ENCOURAGE - EQUIP - EMPOWER
IT STARTS HERE.
Growing up I always knew that Santa Claus was not real. (Sorry. Probably should have prefaced with a “spoiler alert” before dropping that truth.) But I liked to pretend and had a great imagination, so I would put out my play food by our fireplace with a little note embracing the magic of the season.
It’s Thanksgiving -- that time of the year when families come together to share meals and express gratitude. With the pandemic still hanging around, this year’s holiday will be different for all of us. Not for once did I believe a time would come when we will truly show love by staying away from those we love dearly.
I was recently involved in a community service project that involved clearing an overgrown part of a backyard. It looked like an impossible task, but I gamely put on my gloves and went to work. As I got started I realized how easy it was to pull off the top of the weeds. And aesthetically that looked pretty nice. You couldn’t really tell that the root was still there. It was a little bumpy, but overall, it would have been easy to dust the dirt off my hands and say, “Good enough.”
How do you respond in a crisis? I have always been one of those people who just puts her head down and does what needs to be done. I push through the difficulties, often not stopping to check what I am thinking and feeling. I just do the next thing until the crisis is over! Then when I come out on the other side, I look back and see how God worked in the situation. This tactic is not working too well right now because the length of the “crisis” is so long. It’s been six months of unprecedented craziness. That’s a long time to keep your head down!
Growing up in a Puerto Rican household I could count on several things to happen when family came to visit. There would be a lot of food, it would be loud, and the women would inevitably end up gathered together, aware of, and in tuned to, only each other. I found my mom and aunts fascinating. Their conversations would flow from English to Spanish back to English effortlessly, sometimes comprised of laughter, sometimes tears, sometimes looks I knew not to interrupt. Often all of the above.
Of all the things God is none of it matters as much to me as His faithfulness. If He is love, but not consistently love, He is less than perfect. If He is just but not always just, that is terrifying. If He gives grace but is not forever gracious, my relationship with Him will be based on fear and self-righteousness. In all these things, His faithfulness is the thread that binds them all together for His glory and our good.
When I first saw that the Fruit of the Spirit I was to write about was ‘kindness,’ I inwardly groaned. Kindness is such a generic word, like ‘nice.’ It gets used all the time, but it’s not specific. On the other hand, if it’s listed in the Fruit of the Spirit, it must be important. So over the last few weeks as I’ve pondered what to write about, I was reminded of the many times I have been the recipient of kindness and how it made all the difference in the world.
