There are days, as a parent, that your kids will test you. They will fight each other like they’re trying to draw blood. They will disobey and defy you in ways that will knock you off your feet. And they’ll act out in ways that makes me think at least, “I was NEVER like this as a child.” 

And maybe I wasn’t, but I’m sure in other ways, I was. I can remember plenty of times I got in trouble for talking back, being mean to my brother, or being disrespectful. I can remember plenty of times that I slammed my door as a teen, thinking that would show my parents how angry I was. And I know that my parents still loved me through it, but now I know how they must have felt on the other side of that door.

Have you ever wondered how Jesus went from feeding the five thousand, to only have a handful of people at the foot of the cross when He died?

The truth is, Jesus had His twelve disciples that He hand-picked and called to ministry with Him, but there were other disciples that also travelled with Jesus to the different places that He went to in the three years He taught, ministered, and served. Not everyone went everywhere the way the twelve did, but Jesus had a way of attracting followers just by nature of what He was doing.

Today, we begin with a laugh: Sam was scrolling through Twitter a few nights ago and started to chuckle. When I asked him what was so funny, he told me that someone asked via tweet, “Who is Harold Angel?” Of course, this person would be confusing Mr. Harold Angel with the opening line of the same Christmas hymn called, “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing.” The lyrics were originally written by Charles Wesley as a poem and later put to music by George Whitfield in 1753, when the original first line– Hark, how the welkin (heaven) rings– was revised to what we know and love today. What strikes most historians about this hymn is the lyrics; not only are they theologically sound, but they are beautifully put. In three stanzas, this song presents the Gospel in a meaningful and succinct way, which is probably why it has stood the test of time– almost 300 years to be exact.

The Fruits of the Spirit remind me of Sunday school lessons. No matter where you go to church, odds are, if you were a kid there was some kind of poster or coloring sheet that had pictures of apples, oranges, bananas, grapes, etc. and they all were labeled with a different fruit of the Spirit. There are songs that we learn in order to memorize them, and maybe you were given a piece of candy or a prize if you could list them all off the top of your head. As we get older, the term “Fruits of the Spirit” feels like a Christianese phrase that is glossed over and never really thought about beyond that Sunday school lesson from decades ago. It’s kind of on the same level as the armor of God, or the Ten Commandments: really, it’s a foundational idea to the Christian walk, but it’s reviewed so often that we forget the precious values these things hold for us to spiritually mature past the Bible basics.