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From the Pastor’s Study…

Galatians 5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
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goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control;

During my continuing education week, I took the time to engage in learning more about the
Apostle Paul. The above scripture text is a very small sample from the letters St. Paul wrote
to various churches. The church in Galicia was problematic. Paul knew they were struggling.
There was a lot of in-fighting, negativity, people within the group vying for power, and general
discord. Paul was concerned about them and so he takes the time to write them a letter, and

among other things, exhorts them to be kind to one another. In fact, kindness is a major part
of Paul’s exhortation in all his letters. The word kindness and the need for Christians to be
kind to one another as a sign of their faith, is found more than 50 times in the bible. That’s a
lot of kindness! When you think about it, it makes perfect sense though, because if one is a
person of faith, if one understands that they have been saved by God’s mercy and grace, and
have allowed this gift to transform their lives, then kindness to those we interact with is a nat-
ural expression of what it means to be a Christian. Negativity, criticism, and judgmental atti-

tudes have no place.

It’s not that the Galatians were bad people, they were just people who forgot themselves and
what their focus should be in the world. They didn’t look themselves in the mirror and ques-
tion their actions in relationship to their faith in Christ. Truth is, that is so very easy to do.
Our feelings get hurt, or we want something to go our own way, or our ego gets wrapped up
in what power we can grab and what we can control, and the next thing we know, kindness

and compassion and patience and gentleness, all the things St. Paul points to, goes out the
window. And worse, we may not even be able to identify the fact that we are not being kind
and caring and patient and gentle with those around us. Instead we spend our time criticizing
others and our actions can get ugly and death-giving pretty quick. Which is why actively
attending to expressing kindness is absolutely essential to our own well-being. St. Paul even
goes so far as to see it as a fruit of the spirit! In other words, I think St. Paul knew kindness
and expressing kindness is a spiritual discipline. What we intentionally act, out transforms us

and in turn connects us to our Gracious God in even more profound ways.

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