I went on my daily walk today and invited Jesus to tag along.
I’ve had a few thoughts I wanted to share with Him. Specifically, some world and cultural events that have been occurring, and I’m not so sure He’s aware of how dire things are. I said to Him,
”Lord, we have become incredibly angry. Anger spews in our small towns and cities and bubbles beneath the surface in our homes and churches, and our screens; our world wide webs are the worst! It’s here we find an avalanche of righteous indignation that covers most of us with red hot lava and makes us feel sticky and icky as we move throughout our lives. We are spiteful and hateful and bored—the boredom strongly evidenced through the excessive amount of time we have to invest in our anger and hatred, and issues like a global pandemic and celebrities and cancel culture and vaccinations and politics and the language used or not used to describe our children with special needs all providing that small spark which we will happily stoke to create a flame. Oh yes, we have flaming hot, angry opinions for all of it.
One individual voices one particular opinion and another voices something different, and we hurl rocks from our self-righteous perches behind brightly lit screens; the hefty, tyrannical boulders falling heavy upon seemingly invisible and invincible souls. We hurl and hurl until our shoulders ache and our hearts are muddied and black, and we can’t find joy in anything anymore because we’re so covered in the filth that’s flung from the rocks.
We hurl until Stephen is finally dead beneath the weight of our words.
Photo credit: The Attitude Problem on Instagram.
Words which leave in their wake little crevices of emptiness in the human spirit, and we thrive on the power we have over a person through our anger. These holes we create in people’s souls—yes, there are people behind those screens—overflow with insecurities and pain and angst, and we find ourselves back in Eden beneath the tree of despair, back where we are caught holding the forbidden and asking ourselves: Why, oh why must we always return to the tree?
Jesus, what do we do with this? How do we fix it, Lord? How do we fill the gaping, oozing holes that humanity has created? How do we remedy such an expansive brokenness?”
Jesus didn’t have much to say, so I slowly trudged up the last hill and veered into my husband’s garden to see if I could possibly scrounge up one or two remaining tomatoes—the delicious fruit of his labor I’d been indulging in all summer.
The plants hung limp, their life long gone and instead, replaced with brittle branches. A few held remnants of rotten fruit, fruit which didn’t ripen in time or fruit mauled by creatures great and small, and it occurred to me that the answer to most of my questions included a simple, time honored truth:
We are to bear fruit.
Photo credit: Niklas Hamann on Unsplash.com
Period.
We who walk in His footsteps and beseech His name and bear His image, our job is to bear fruit: fruit that will be life nourishing to many in our fallen world, and sometimes even life-saving for a few. Not all of us will have the best or the flashiest or the prettiest fruit to bear at the particular stage we’re at in life, but it is still our duty to give what we have, however that looks in this moment.
Wherever we are in the ripening process of “becoming more like Him,” we should offer that to the weary world we live in. He commands this of us. Offer our kindness, our patience, our steadfastness, and our faithfulness. Being good, loving, and joyful, and displaying gentleness and self-control whenever possible. This might include hitting the delete button when the perfect, angry barrage of words easily fires off the keyboard in response to something we don’t agree with. That’s fruit. Or perhaps it’s displaying joy in the midst of sleep deprivation, and patiently explaining to our children how to complete their virtual tasks yet again. More fruit. Or maybe it’s considering it an honor to change another diaper for your child with profound special needs, viewing it through a lens of honor, rather than grief, as you care for someone who cannot care for themselves. Not fantastically impressive fruit by worldly standards, but holy fruit rendered in obedience to Him.
Give what fruit you have in this day, this hour, and this moment. It’s the only moment we’re guaranteed anyway. Give your fruit: your mangled, less than perfect, not super impressive, yet full of grace, mercy, and goodness fruit that He redeemed for you at Calvary. Give it away lest it rot while you hold it firmly within your grasp.
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.”
Jess Ronne is an author, speaker, and caregiver advocate. She is founder and executive director of The Lucas Project—a non-profit dedicated to providing respite opportunities for special needs families. She and her husband Ryan recently relocated to Michigan from Tennessee with their 8 children, including their son Lucas who has profound special needs. Her story of beauty from ashes has been shared on The Today Show, Daily Mail and Huffington Post and is detailed in her memoir Sunlight Burning at Midnight. To follow the ongoing saga she can be found at www.jessplusthemess.com or Facebook/Jessplusthemess or Instagram/Jessplusthemess.
