October 2007

The quote for this week actu­ally comes from a devo­tion enti­tled “A Gen­tle Breeze or a Sledge Ham­mer” which is aimed exclu­sively at women and based upon this verse:

But the Holy Spirit pro­duces this kind of fruit in our lives: love, joy, peace, patience, kind­ness, good­ness, faith­ful­ness, gen­tle­ness, and self-control.

Gala­tians 5:22–23 (NLT)

In recent months, I have been read­ing The Mes­sage and absolutely love it. Here’s how the same pas­sage is pre­sented in that translation:

But what hap­pens when we live God’s way? He brings gifts into our lives, much the same way that fruit appears in an orchard — things like affec­tion for oth­ers, exu­ber­ance about life, seren­ity. We develop a will­ing­ness to stick with things, a sense of com­pas­sion in the heart, and a con­vic­tion that a basic holi­ness per­me­ates things and peo­ple. We find our­selves involved in loyal com­mit­ments, not need­ing to force our way in life, able to mar­shal and direct our ener­gies wisely.

It is not often that I totally dis­agree with the quote selected for this writ­ing exer­cise. But this is one of those times.

We are built for moun­tains, dawns and aes­thetic affini­ties because we are cre­ated in the image of the Divine Cre­ator. So to say that we are not meant to reflect that beauty on a con­sis­tent basis is wrong and offen­sive to the one who made us — and reflects totally out­dated think­ing. The above quote was, after all, writ­ten in 1918 and reflects the kind of nar­row, black-and-white, neg­a­tive world view that was char­ac­ter­is­tic of that time period.

We are born pure and capa­ble of being in spir­i­tual con­ver­sa­tion with the Divine in a most pro­found way, but then we grow and go out into the world — and become cor­rupted by its nature.