Meditation for February 2008

Last month, January, 2008, I wrote a meditation on the fruit of the Spirit. On reading it over a few days ago, I found that I had been careless in my editing before I posted the meditation on my website. At one point, I listed the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control, and then proceeded to refer to them as seven in number when, in actual fact, there are nine in the list. At another place, I listed them and omitted the fruit of faithfulness from the list. I apologise for this and promise to be more careful in the future.

This month, February 2008, I would like to meditate on the first of the fruit of the Spirit listed by St. Paul in his letter to the Galatians; the fruit of love. In this month, when we celebrate St. Valentine’s Day on February 14^th, it would seem that this would be an appropriate fruit on which to meditate.

The love that I am talking about in this meditation, however, is not the box of chocolates type of love—the overly sweet, heart-shaped gift of love that can be the cause of disappointment, anger or jealousy, when it seems that your partner appears to have forgotten the day, or forgotten you as being the meaningful recipient of that box of chocolates, or Valentine’s card, or engagement ring. No, the love that I am meditating on is the love that St. Paul speaks of in his first letter to the Corinthians: Love is patient; love is kind; love is not boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. 1 Corinthians 13: 4 – 8.

Love that is the fruit of the Spirit is not conditional; it does not depend on whether my partner remembers to give me a gift on St. Valentine’s Day or not; it does not depend on my partner remembering our anniversary, or my friend remembering my birthday. Love that is the fruit of the Spirit is all the other Spiritual fruit combined; it is joyful, peaceful, patient, kind, generous, faithful, gentle, self-controlled. Love never ends, it doesn’t keep score of another’s faults, it only wants the other’s good.

This love of the Spirit is all we ever need and all we could ever hope for; it is God’s gift to us and our gift to God and to one another. This Spiritual love is indeed the basis of Christ’s gift to us and to the world and the source of the healing of the world’s ills.

Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. Romans 13: 8 Faith, hope, and love abide, these three; and the greatest of these is love. 1 Corinthians 13:13

 © Judith Lawrence