Looking for Fruits of the Spirit in the Pandemic
Can you find any good in the pandemic and the social isolation and world shut-down? There’s plenty of bad, worst of all being the deaths. But Adam Cooper recently challenged us at church to look back at the past year and see where the fruits of the Spirit were visible. So here’s what I see:
Love: People showed love to the vulnerable by making sacrifices they might not have wanted to make in order to protect others, like masks, social distancing, altering family gatherings, changing up how church is done. This is agape love.
Joy: People felt joy in things they had never experienced before or never fully appreciated. People hiked and spent time in nature. We all loved Italians singing from windows. Pets benefitted from owners staying home and gave joy in return. And how many loaves of homemade bread were baked and enjoyed?
Peace: At the first shutdown, a quiet spread out over much of the globe. Cars, trains, planes were stilled; factories reduced production; loud venues were silenced; and animals came out to roam through neighborhoods and cities. It was an astonishing quiet that we had never experienced.
Patience: We learned patience. We had to be patient about staying home and waiting for the all-clear signal from the medical experts. We had to be patient as we waited in lines to get into stores, waited in drive-thrus, waited for packages, and waited for a vaccine.
Kindness: Wow, did we ever see kindness!! People sending DoorDash to the sick, taking food to neighbors, calling family members they hadn’t called much before, making entertaining videos for us all, voluntarily working overtime in essential jobs. It was all very heartening and showed us what the world could look like.
Goodness: We saw a goodness we hadn’t seen in decades when millions of people around the nation took to the streets to advocate for racial justice in response to the stark videos we saw of blatantly unfair treatment (often fatal) of people of color. Then the advocacy spread around the globe. This is goodness, when people do something right even though it’s of no benefit to them personally, and may even cause them harm or retribution.
Faithfulness: People demonstrated faithfulness in many ways. Some people were faithful to their local businesses, continuing to buy from them even when they couldn’t go inside. They were faithful to their housecleaners, their hair stylists and barbers, by continuing to pay them, even when they couldn’t use their services. Christians were faithful to keep tithing to their churches even when they couldn’t go to church.
Gentleness: The most touching examples of gentleness were nurses and other medical personnel staying with dying patients who couldn’t have family present. This may have been the hardest part of the past year, and strangers demonstrated ultimate gentleness and compassion by attending as many dying people as they could.
Self-control: For some people, self-control was exercised just by getting up and getting dressed in the morning! Working from home, or not working at all, presented new challenges to our self-discipline. In addition, many parents were challenged to level-up on their self-control with their kids home 24/7. While many people may have failed to live up to their own expectations during this pandemic, any exhibition of self-control during this time counts as a win in my book.
The pandemic is not good. But God redeems everything if we look to see where He is working. “Keep your eyes open for God; watch for His works.” Psalm 105:4.
