In our epistle reading last week, St Paul enumerated the fruit of the Spirit for us (Galatians 5:22-23): love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (for those of you who are also members of the Oxford Comma Club, you’re welcome).

It’s an amazing and aspirational list, but it’s just a list if we leave it there. Paul doesn’t want that to happen, so he immediately gives us in chapter six several examples of what it might actually look like to live a life in which this list becomes practice. In doing so, he puts his finger directly on the root of an immense problem we experience in our culture today…why we don’t, and why we can’t, get along.

Sadly, more and more, even in the Church.

See you Sunday.

Steve+