Do you love your brother?

1 John 4:20-21

     If anyone boasts, "I love God," and goes right on hating his brother or sister, thinking nothing of it, he is a liar. If he won't love the person he can see, how can he love the God he can't see? The command we have from Christ is blunt: Loving God includes loving people. You've got to love both.

This is a concept that I will willingly admit to struggling with, there are certain people who at times cause me to come very close to breaking this commandment. I would not say that I go so far as hating anyone but at times certain people in certain situations have caused me to think some distinctly unchristlike thoughts.

I know that in being a Christian we should aim to be Christlike, to act as He acted and to love as He loved and I know this includes loving the unlovable. I know that this is axiomatic but it is something that we should not just brush over, something we should explore and consider carefully. I know that loving the unlovable is a paradox but through Him all things impossible become possible. If we have accepted God and the Spirit has come on us and dwells within us then these things that are humanly impossible become possible.

I was asked a little while ago by my minister about my feelings regarding my ex, what feelings remained, did I hate her or was there a part of me that still loved her. The answer I gave surprised me more than I think it surprised her. The reason being the one person in the world who has done more to hurt me than anyone else, the one person who in the eyes of the world I would have a justified cause to hate I don't. No matter how I think about it, no matter how much the memories hurt I can not bring myself to hate the person I once loved so much. I would also say that there is likely to always be a part of me that remembers and longs for the good times between us, she will always be a part of my heart even if it is a very small part.

On the flip side of this there is a particular client I have cause to deal with at work who would certainly be the cause of many a tarnished halo. He is a particularly difficult person to work with, he is one of those people who goes out of his way to provoke a response from people, someone so in need of attention he will do anything to get it even if it is negative attention. He works out exactly which buttons to press and works out which subjects are most likely to get a rise out of each individual. All of the staff at work to our shame have at times avoided this person and passed him off to a colleague and is the subject of much venting in the staff rooms. I felt particularly shamed the other day when one of my colleagues passed comment that as I intend to give my life to full time ministry and this person was getting to me it was particularly bad. Now all of my colleagues and most of the residents I work with know I am a Christian and most also know I intend to give my life to God's work and I felt I had let God down by my actions in this subject.

How can I someone who is a practising Christian and who is determined to do everything I need to to grown in the faith, someone who has grown to the point of being able to forgive the one person in the world who truly hurt me not feel the fraternal love towards this one person. I know that we are not Christ and that we will never be close to being Him, but we have to try. I know that I should be asking the Lord for help in this matter and hopefully God can use me as the person who can make a difference in this person's life. I pray that God will grant me the patience and the grace to work with this resident and that He will keep my feathers unruffled. If I am to boast that "I love God" then I must also be able to boast "I love all my brothers" too, I know this won't happen over night and will be something I am likely to need to work on for my whole life, but I do love God and so through Him I must learn to love my brother too.

The fruits of the spirit - II

Galatians 5:22-23

     But the fruit of the Spirit is 

                 love,

                 joy, 

                 peace, 

                 patience, 

                 kindness, 

                 goodness, 

                 faithfulness, 

                 gentleness 

                            and self-control. 

Against such things there is no law.

This mornings post was on the fruits of the Spirit, since then I have had some time to think about these fruits and what they mean. It has almost become a topic that has become an obsession with the song that has been in my head through to God giving me direction to write this second post today. It has been one of those days where God has decided to be unsubtle, there have been many and frequent signs of fruit today and many situations where the fruits have been needed but also been shown through others. This has come in the form of the six crates of bananas and 12 cases of cherries at work meaning everyone I have seen at work has been carrying fruit, to the man at the museum today showing patience and kindness towards the residents I took along for a day out.

I am not sure where I read it, but recently I read a blog post about the fruits. In this post the writer talked about how people who have the Spirit within them will naturally begin to produce and display fruits. When I read this and while writing my two posts on the fruit of the Spirit I have gone through the list and thought about which of the fruits I posses.

The first one on the list is one that I struggle with at the moment, I know that there are people that I do love, I love all my family and friends, I love my Godson more than anyone or any thing. But there are things I struggle with in love, I struggle with romantic love since my last big relationship and I still struggle to have love for all fellow man at times. However I am getting better at this and since I took on my job with the homeless I have found that I am finding myself with more understanding for my fellow man.

Joy is something that I have never struggled with, even in my darkest days and toughest times I have never struggled with being joyful. I have always been able to see the good in my life and enjoy my life.

Peace and patience for me come as a pair. In my family I am often the one who needs patience and by having it manage to keep the peace. Patience is something that I have developed in my life and I know that when very stressed it sometimes goes out the window but it is something I have developed over the years. Keeping the peace is also something I have had to work on in both my family and work life and something I have found is an ability that is growing in time.

Another pair for me is kindness and goodness. Being kind and good is something that all Christians really should be, it is something the world expects us to be. Being kind and good is something that everyone who has heard of Him knows Christ was. I have tried always to be kind and good but have at times struggled to be at all times. There are situations in life that have and do drive me mad and cause me to be anything but good and kind, but again I do try.

Faithfulness is something I definitely do not struggle with, I believe myself to be a very faithful person who is willing to do anything I can for the people I love. With the exception of the time I ran away from God and the Church I can not think of a single time when I could have been classed as unfaithful.

Gentleness is another trait that I feel that I do posses. I love animals and have had many many pets in my life, many of which were small animals and require very gentle handling. Also I do have a very gentle side to my personality, however it is often hidden from general view and people often do not see it until I allow them to become quite close. So I guess this is a trait I have but need to so some real work on.

The last trait in the list is self control. Now until a year ago I would say that I really struggled with this last trait. I have in the past had many problems with doing things on impulse and an inability to say no to things that I really want, and at times just things that it was possible to have. This has led to many negative impacts on my life, however since I became a Christian, since I truly became a Christian this is something I have found easier to keep on top of, I guess in a simple way, I have developed self-control.

Without trying to sound big headed I feel that I certainly display at least some of the fruits of the Spirit. I feel that it is something that as I am growing in the faith the fruits that I am displaying are also growing, which for me is a fantastic sign that I am truly growing in the spirit. I think it is a good thing that we all sit down and consider how we are doing in the faith, if we are growing fruits for the Lord. I would encourage you all to look at the list and consider are you growing fruits, if not, is there something you can do, if you are can you possibly grow more?

The fruits of the spirit

Galatians 5:22-23
     But the fruit of the Spirit is 

                 love,

                 joy, 

                 peace, 

                 patience, 

                 kindness, 

                 goodness, 

                 faithfulness, 

                 gentleness 

                            and self-control. 

Against such things there is no law.

I have had a song running round my head for simply week, weeks and weeks and weeks. It has been bugging me so much for so long because I knew the tune and some of the words, but it has been that long since I sang them and I was that young at the time that I don't think I was singing the right words.

I finally bit the bullet the other day and decided to ask my friends who I thought may know the song and be able to tell me the words. After a few false starts of friends who knew the song but also could not remember the words one friend finally said they knew both the song and where to find the words. I was pleased to have found someone who could help me with this problem and would hopefully be able to give me the words. But she decided that she would make me suffer saying that as she had given me the first line I would be able to find it myself and learn something about the song.

Now this really annoyed me, I had spent ages searching for this song and I had known the firsat line all along. Did she not think I had searched and searched for this song, here was I so close to finally putting this annoying situation to bed and she wasn't going to help me. However before I complained I decided that I would indeed do one last search and see what came up. What I hadn't at first realised was that my friend had given me one valuable gem of information.

My friend had told me the name of the writers of the song, the infamous Salvation Army duo Gowans and Larson. With this small extra piece of information I was able to find the song and as my friend had obviously wanted me to do I had learned something about the song too. The song is from the musical Spirit which was written by Gowans and Larson and if you visit the link you can find out about the musical too.

Anyway the song goes as follows;

Now the fruit of the Spirit is patience,
And the fruit of the Spirit is peace,
The fruit of the Spirit is gentleness,
And joy that will never cease.
The gift of the Spirit is healing,
And hope for the darkest hour,
The gift of the Spirit is love,
yes, love and power, and power.

     From the musical Spirit (Gowans and Larson)

I intend to write more on the fruits of the spirit in the future, hopefully if I have the time to do the research and time to write it today it will follow this post.

Eye test

Today I went for an eye test. Its been a long time since I was last at the optician and I knew I was going to need new glasses and was not looking forward to the expense this was going to cause me.

Now before I went I had planned to write a post based on eyes and seeing and how we often stumble around blind. But then after my eye test I got talking with the optician who was a lovely young lady from Glasgow. During the conversation we got on to talking about what it was that I do for a living and she was very interested in both my job and my motivation for doing it. This conversation was one of those fantastic opportunities to profess my faith and talk about the work I do.

It has frequently amazed me recently how many people there are out there who when I talk with them and begin to talk about my work and faith they become very interested and supportive of it. This is a much different experience to when in the past I was deeply involved with the science community. When I was studying and working in Physics I often came across hostility towards my faith and the basis of these beliefs.

Back then I used to put this down to the fact that in general scientists are anti religion and anti Christianity. However the more experiences I have talking about my faith recently I am beginning to change my mind about this theory. The reason for this I believe is that in the past I had a very shallow faith that was based on not much at all. This is probably why I found it so easy to shrug off when it didn't suit me. Whereas now my faith is based on a real relationship with God and from that comes a real passion to talk about it and a desire to do His work.

When people see that you are not only professing a faith but also acting on it too then it places you in a whole different position. If you are talking about a subject hypocritically, all talk and no walk, then they are not going to take you seriously. I know that there is much that I still need to learn, there is far I need to walk as with any other Christian, but I am buoyed by the positive experiences I have had and continue to have. I am also pleased that these opportunities to profess my faith are available and that I am becoming much more confident in professing it too.

Smashing stereotypes

Yesterday afternoon I had one of the best times I have had yet in the short time I have been working at my current job. I was recently asked if I would be willing to present a short meeting to the older ladies of my Church in their weekly home league meeting and if I would talk about working with the homeless. Now I am aware that I have only worked with the homeless for a short period of time and my knowledge and experience is slightly lacking, however I had a great idea and accepted.

So yesterday afternoon I went along to the meeting and gave them a meeting unlike anything they are used to or were expecting. It took a little arranging with my managers and colleagues but I managed to arrange to take some of the residents of the homeless shelter I work in along to the meeting with me and allowed them to speak of their experiences and thoughts on homelessness and living in a homeless shelter.

The meeting was more of a question and answer session which seemed to work quite well and seeing the reactions of the audience to some of the replies and stories was interesting. At the beginning of the meeting the audience were expecting what most people without experience with the homeless would assume. These guys must be homeless for a reason, they are possibly lazy or a victim of their own devices, uneducated and uncivilized. However after a short amount of time listening to the stories and history of the residents you could see the audience beginning to realise that these are normal everyday people you could easily pass in the street. They began to realise that for a few situations and circumstances being slightly different these guys could be living a "normal" life and it could be us in their position.

I know that since I first began working with the homeless I have had many up and down times, I have had great days where it seems you could possibly fix all the problems and then others where it seems there is no way to make any progress. In these experiences I have learned to value these people and the skills they can bring, I have learned that there can indeed be many diamonds in the rough. I am not saying that there are not problems, that there are not people not wanting of help or not extremely difficult to help. But I have come to realise that acceptance of who these people are, of the way they are is the beginning. I have realised that in seeing the good in each of them you can begin to bring it out and how them a life very different to what they currently live.

We are all victims of stereotyping and we are all guilty of propagating stereotypes through both the way we act and how we think of others. Sometimes we need to sit and think, or listen to the world around us and realise that behind every stereotype is a person, behind every mask is a soul in hiding.

Jesus was always smashing through stereotypes with both His actions and the interactions He had with others. He was not one to ignore someone because they had been painted in a certain light by society, He was not one to judge someone for a situation or circumstance they were currently in. Instead He look inside to the good each of them had inside and found a way to let it out. This is something I have learned in association with the homeless and need to apply in all walks of my life, as Christians it is something we should all be doing with everyone we meet.