Meditation for October 2008

Most months during 2008, we have been meditating on the fruit of the Spirit as listed by St. Paul in his epistle to the Galatians: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. From February to September, we have examined eight of the nine spiritual fruit and now, in October, we will look at the last of these fruit, self-control.

Perhaps it is not surprising that self-control is the last of the spiritual fruit mentioned by St. Paul. This fruit is probably the most difficult to cultivate and the one that takes the longest to come to maturity.

It is not easy to control one’s self, one’s ego, one’s actions, emotions and reactions. It is easier to see where another person should have been more in control of herself than it is to see where I should have been in control of myself and my actions. It is easy to excuse myself for certain unpleasant behaviours when I quickly blame another for those same behaviours.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was talking about when he said how easy it is to offer to take a speck out of someone’s eye when there is a log in my own eye. He says that first I must remove the log from my own eye and then I will be able to see clearly to take out the speck from the other person’s eye. Matthew 7:5

First, I must learn to control myself and my behaviour then I will be better able to help another person to see where she needs to control herself.

How can we learn to have self-control? I suppose that first we must realise that there is a need for us to be self-controlled. Why should we control the way we behave? What is it about our behaviour that needs to be controlled, that needs to be changed? If we catch ourselves doing or saying something that we would not like being done or said to us that would be a good place to start. These unpleasant behaviours are often habits that we are not even aware of making.

In order to cultivate the fruit of self-control we have to be diligent in searching for the times when we are not controlled. As a gardener takes care to search out and root up the weeds that are out of control in her garden so we must search out and root up the behaviours that are out of control in our spiritual garden. Self-control assists the other spiritual fruit in our garden to grow and come to maturity as well.

The spiritual fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, and gentleness are all helped in their growth by the presence of self-control in our spiritual garden. Without our continual cultivation of self-control, love will deteriorate to hate, joy to sadness, peace to unrest, patience to impatience, kindness to unkindness, generosity to selfishness, faithfulness to unfaithfulness, gentleness to roughness. Our spiritual gardens will become places of loneliness and ugliness and a lot of work will have to be done to bring them back to the places where we will be able to walk happily and freely with God.

Resolve, then, to continue working on each of the spiritual fruit and to bring them, with God’s help, to maturity. A person whose spiritual garden is filled with these fruit will be a person who shows God’s Spirit to others. That person’s presence will be sought after because she will reflect the Spirit of God in her life and will be a pleasant and refreshing person with whom to keep company.

 © Judith Lawrence October 2008