Fruit vs. Feeling

It took all day to write this, but it still seems fitting. You know, I hate those mornings when I wake up and all I want is to be left alone, but there's no escape to be found. I don't want to snap at everyone. I just need space. Reading doesn't work, because anyone can interrupt, and disappearing in my car doesn't work, either, because I spend the entire trip feeling guilty and apprehensive. I haven't figured out the most effective way of dealing with this state of mind, so if you have any ideas, feel free to share. As it is, I'll just wait for the mood to pass and try to be amicable.

I guess days like these make me feel like even more of a ragamuffin. :/ I mean, really, Christians are supposed to be nice, happy, charming, sweet, and obliging all the time. We walk around with smiles plastered on our faces and sing, "This is the day, this is the day that the Lord has made, that the Lord has made!" After all, Paul never got up on the wrong side of the bed.

Hah. Please.

There's no way any human on this planet could wake up and feel great every single day, and I've never found a Biblical expectation for Christians to be nice, happy, charming, sweet, or obliging all the time. I do find, however, an exhortation to live by the Spirit, producing the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control Funny thing, though: the fruit of the Spirit are not feelings; each one is either a conscious state of being or a chosen action. Unfortunately, it’s easy to confuse the two in mainstream Christianity: niceness for love, happiness for joy, charm for goodness, sweetness for patience, and being obliging for kindness. They do seem similar, but they spring from radically different motives and heart attitudes. You can have the fruit of the Spirit when you crawl out of bed in a bad mood, but good luck conjuring up your counterfeit emotions!

So, that brings me back to my mood today. I may not feel like smiling (I don’t), I may not feel like singing (I don’t), and I may not feel like being “nice” (I don’t), but I can choose to live by the Spirit inside of me today. I wish I made the choice more consistently to be who I am in Christ as opposed to who I was, but with time and maturity, I pray the choice becomes more natural. Until then, please be patient with me and my childish moods. I’m still growing up.