Spring is well on its way, at least here in southeast Texas. The first sign is our annual coating of pine pollen, which gives our world a yellow glow. But the flowers and trees are also beginning to bloom - Carolina jasmine, redbud and ornamental pear trees, and even the first bluebonnets are emerging, making good on their annual promise of new birth and new growth. What a miracle the burst of new life is after a long winter of bare branches and fruitlessness! 

I'd love to share with you something I wrote over 20 years ago, as a part of a little project I worked on about the fruit of the Spirit listed in Galatians chapter 5. It is always fun for me to look back and "hear" what almost-30 year old me was thinking about. I was in the thick of our young marriage, motherhood, and ministry years, and was writing from a just-post 9/11 perspective.

Looking back, that tragic event served as the cracked-open doorway for my own understanding that this world is broken. Before that event, I was like so many people who live their entire lives being surprised by one terrible thing happening after another, convinced that each one is an anomaly. The truth is that the terrible things are to be expected; rather, it is the lovely and beautiful things in life that are the real surprise, and each one should be treasured. 

So how beautiful are the characteristics of God, that He so freely shares with us through His Spirit! Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control; all of these are the antithesis of our cruel and selfish ways. Not long ago, when the world was smaller and our culture was still influenced by a biblical worldview, it was easier to believe that all people were naturally gifted with these same lovely characteristics, but it’s not so easy to think that any more. The whole world is connected and our selfish human nature is on display for all to see like never before thanks to social media, which is like a mirror that shows what is really in the hearts of people. Life in the Spirit is truly countercultural, and the world is desperate for more of each of these lovely traits in action. Our lives can bless and encourage just like the spring blooms, when we keep in step with the Spirit. 

Today, let's go back to 2002, and revisit some thoughts about God's goodness...

Psalm 34:1-10 (NIV)
I will extol the Lord at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.  My soul will boast in the Lord; let the afflicted hear and rejoice.  Glorify the Lord with me, let us exalt His name together.  I sought the Lord, and He answered me; he delivered me from all my fears.  Those who look to Him are radiant; their faces are never covered with shame. The poor man called, and the Lord heard him; He saved him out of all his troubles. The angel of the Lord encamps around those who fear Him and He delivers them. Taste and see that the Lord is good; blessed is the man who takes refuge in him.

Each of the fruit of the Spirit is a representation of one of the qualities of God’s character.  Anyone who has met the Lord and has experienced salvation knows that the goodness of God is like nothing else in the world.  I will never forget the way my whole outlook was changed when Jesus became my Savior and Lord.  Not everyone actually feels despairing or suicidal outside of a relationship with Christ, but so many have at least felt the hopelessness and lack of purpose that exists outside of a relationship with Jesus, and that was my experience.
    
When Jesus comes into a heart, He rights all of the wrongs, and makes things come into order. When I gave my heart to Jesus, I felt complete for the first time.  Jesus brings satisfaction, wholeness, peace, and purpose:  He is good.  Nothing about me changed on the outside.  I still appeared to be the same person.  But on the inside, everything was changed, and I could feel it.  To quote a great old hymn, “My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought! My sin, not in part but in whole, was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more, praise the Lord, praise the Lord, oh my soul!”  Before salvation we are weighed down by the burden of our sinful nature.  After the cross we are free through the shed blood and righteousness of Jesus Christ.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good.”  He is good.

As we are made new creatures in Christ, we take on His righteousness and His character.  Our sinful nature is put to death and we begin to walk in step with the Spirit.  We experience and feel the goodness of God, and we are able to pass on His goodness to others. 

How can one describe goodness?  I think the psalmist understood what it meant as he wrote Psalm 34.  God, in His goodness, hears and answers our cries.  He delivers us from fears and anxiety.  He takes away our shame.  He saves us from our troubles.  He delivers us. In essence, He takes all of the ugliness from our fallen nature and replaces it with what is right, unbroken, and unblemished:  with goodness. 

The world is ugly and broken.  If you turn on the news tonight you will see dozens of images testifying to the sad state of this world.  Wars, terrorism, diseases, famine, domestic violence, murder, abandonment, addiction, abuse, hedonism – the list of woes is long and painful.  This world is broken. It is wrong and it is upside down.  Jesus alone can set us aright and bring light and goodness into our lives.  

As followers of Christ, as bearers of the fruit of His Spirit, it is our duty to bring His goodness – or one could also call it His wholeness and reality – to a broken world.  Before experiencing Christ, we all do things just because that is what everyone else is doing, without really thinking about it.  Young people drink alcohol, experiment with drugs, act rebellious, and become promiscuous because that is what the world says they should do.  Married couples fight, become adulterous, and divorce because that is what the world says they should do.  Children whine, fight, act rebellious and greedy because no one ever challenges them to anything different or better. The acts of the sinful nature are ugly.    

Since we have experienced the goodness of the Lord, it is our responsibility to share it with the people around us.  We have experienced the liberty and sweet freedom that comes from living within the restraints of Christianity.  The goodness of God is in His reality – in His holiness and purity.  It’s like tasting something delicious for the first time.  When my baby had her first taste of ice cream, her eyes lit up and she opened her mouth for more.  “Taste and see that the Lord is good!”
    
I will never forget the actual relief that I felt when I became a Christian and realized that there really was a right and wrong, and that it really did matter how I lived my life.  The choices I had been making had been leaving me empty and despondent – my life was not going anywhere.  After I met Jesus and began doing things to please Him, I felt terrific!  It would be wrong for me to think that I am the only person in the world who would feel that way about the changes that Jesus brought to my behavior.  It would be wrong for me to believe that I shouldn’t share the goodness of God because people might find His commandments restrictive or outdated.  I had never felt more real or alive than I have since I met Jesus, and the same will be true for so many others.
    
Most people have such a misconception of Jesus and of Christianity in general.  It is not just a list of do’s and don’ts.  It is a living, growing relationship with our Creator and Savior.  It is finally becoming the person He created us to be.  In His goodness He brings freedom where we were in bondage.  He brings order where we lived in chaos.  He brings reality when we were trapped in deception.  Through the power of the Holy Spirit we can share this goodness with the people around us.  I will never stop being grateful for my parents for raising me in a Christian home, or for the woman who shared God’s goodness with me in college, and who challenged me to surrender my life to Him, And there are many people in your life today that would be ecstatic to hear of His goodness through you!

It is not difficult.  We just need to open up our lives and share the good news.  It is always true that people will be turned off by Christians who speak angrily, judgmentally, or condescendingly.  However, it is also true that people respond to kindness.  If we take the time to make an investment in someone’s life, we can earn the right to speak the truth to that person in love. In my own experience, my friend in college did not mock my very ungodly behavior choices or tell me that I was going to hell to burn forever.  She invited me into her home week after week and shared her life with me.  She listened to me, prayed for me, and cooked for me!  She was a friend to me, and I grew to love and trust her. I saw her life and could see the obvious difference between the two of us.  The peace and contentment she displayed were something that I wanted; I wanted to be like her.  Soon, when I was presented with the choice of salvation, I was ready.  I had seen the goodness of God displayed in her life, and wanted that in my own life.
    
​Since then, I have seen the same story unfold in countless lives!  The goodness of God is so attractive and powerful.  The Holy Spirit will develop this fruit in our lives when we ask Him, and many people will “taste and see that the Lord is good!”

Back to 2024…

With a couple more decades of life lived, I would just add that our wills must be exercised in allowing God’s goodness to grow in and flow through our lives. He has done all the heavy lifting to save us, and His Spirit is always at work in conforming us into the image of Christ. We must cooperate with this work, and be so mindful of each day’s choices. The world is screaming for us all to be angry and vengeful, but God is full of mercy and grace, and asks us to be His representatives to the people around us. How amazing it is to have the opportunity each day to choose to bring God’s goodness everywhere we go!

And with that, full disclosure - I edited out so many exclamation points, as twenty-something me used them a bit too liberally. But I pray that these thoughts will stay with you this week, and that the wonderful goodness of God will shine through you wherever you go and upon whomever the Lord leads you towards. May your life be an encouragement and blessing to many - 

Happy Valentine’s Day to you and yours! I confess that one of the great pleasures I find in life is reading old, and often quite romantic, novels by George MacDonald. He was a contemporary of Charles Dickens, Mark Twain, and other literary giants of the nineteenth century, and did not shy away from sharing his deep faith with his readers. Rather, his novels are always intentionally packed with godly characters and themes, which is so refreshing and encouraging.

Right now, I am reading Thomas Wingfold, Curate (aka The Curate’s Awakening*), which tells the story of a young preacher who, upon confrontation, finds his faith terribly lacking, and throughout the course of the narrative is truly born again. In the meantime, he helps a local sister and brother walk through a dark and devastating time in their lives. As he is coming awake spiritually, Thomas thinks deeply about the reality and importance of the hope found in Jesus Christ…

​This set me thinking about how often it is too easy to be flippant about others’ pain. We are alive in a generation that is absolutely deadened to deep feeling. We watch movies and TV shows all the time that depict violent, terrible things happening and we don’t even blink an eye, let alone lose any sleep over it. We hear news stories about atrocities, and we go right on to the next thing - just keep scrolling. We move from one “outrage” (which is an effective strategy known as, I believe, “clickbait”) to another, and our blood pressure barely even rises, if at all. Our senses have been overloaded and dulled to the point that just about nothing phases us. We have seen and heard at all.


This all sounds fine, and good, until we take stock of how well we are doing at caring for our neighbors. The sensory-dulling of our world does not serve us well in helping people. It is too easy to be and remain a spectator. I just can’t be bothered to care about pain and brokenness in the people around me when I have the mindset that it’s just another day, after all. Just keep scrolling through life.


Worse, we actually feel a strange sort of giddy relief when bad things happen to other people. Thank God they’re not happening to us! Sickness, legal trouble, drug addictions, marriage implosions, broken relationships, on and on the list goes and I can’t seem to muster up very much care or concern. It feels like the movies that I watch – not my problem. Until of course, it is my problem, and then everything is different.

Once you have experienced something difficult or tragic or unjust, and have had opportunity to see and understand how good, faithful, kind, and gracious God is in the middle of the darkness, it becomes much easier to have compassion, and to want to ease the load of grief for someone else who is going through the same thing. This is one amazing example of how our good Father in heaven makes beauty for ashes every day. People who have walked through difficult, hellacious things, and had their faith strengthened through it can offer God’s comfort and hope like nobody else can. Just a kind voice and sympathetic face uttering the words, “I understand” can be so meaningful to anyone going through a crisis. The weight and authority that is given to someone’s words after walking through their own bitter experiences can give vital hope and courage to others.

Once you have had the terrible experience, you are changed forever. The world tells us all to stay in our pain and never move past it. But God’s Kingdom is so different from this world. We might find ourselves deeply wounded in life, but subsequently uniquely fitted to help others in a powerful way. No one can have compassion for couples who lose a child to miscarriage or stillbirth, or any other way, like another couple who has experienced the same loss and grief. No one can understand what it feels like to get the frightening medical diagnosis like a person who has experienced that same thing. No one can understand what it feels like to hear a knock on the door and to be handed a legal paper that changes your life forever like someone who has heard that same knock. A pink slip at work, blue lights in the driveway, betrayal by a friend, divorce papers… the list of life’s devastations can be long. Until you go through something yourself, it is difficult to put yourself in someone else’s shoes. Once you go through something difficult yourself, and experience firsthand the nearness and comfort of Jesus, it is important to share that comfort and hope with others.


Think about what you have walked through in your own life. What difficult circumstances, what unimaginable realities? We live in a broken world, and everywhere we go are surrounded by people who have endured terrible physical, sexual, and emotional pain or abuse. Or they have lost someone they loved very much in a tragic circumstance. Or they have made terrible choices that yielded bitter fruit. Last time I mentioned the verse in Lamentations that says, “because of God’s great love we are not consumed.” It is amazing that people all around us have lived through some of the difficult circumstances that life has brought their way, and it truly is an incredible miracle when someone makes it through singing the praises of God, with their faith intact and even strengthened.


It is this way that the hands and feet of Jesus are multiplied by the millions. Those of us who have gone through difficult things yet can testify to God‘s grace and nearness even in the darkest, deepest pits can help others who are currently going through a similar situation. Those of us who have experienced slander and betrayal of every kind, but who found comfort from Christ who was betrayed with a kiss from a friend, can encourage others who are currently facing the same abuse and disappointment. Those of us who have endured abuse to our bodies and minds, and were comforted by Jesus who was brutalized and crucified, can be there for people who are freshly suffering through similar things.


This world is cruel and is filled with broken people and broken systems. This is where people of the light can shine brightly. We too have endured difficult, unimaginable things, but in Christ have a peace that passes all understanding and a love that is higher, wider, and stronger than anything that would try to overcome it. 


As we celebrate this special season of love and kindness, be mindful of those who need your encouragement most. Pick up your phone and give them a call or send them a text. Don’t assume that you would be bothering them;  too many of us assume that, and too few of us reach out. Your words and encouragement will be a song in their souls, and will give them strength. Send that email, or flowers, or a card, or a gift – any token of care is so meaningful to someone who is going through the darkest time of their life. The last thing our family, friends, and neighbors need is one more person either adding fuel to the fire that is burning in their life, or totally ignoring them. Instead, may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.

​

- Mary ​

​*that title has all of the broad Scottish dialogue edited into standard English