But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. Galatians 5:22-23

I’ve spent most of my adult life trying to lock each of these spiritual fruits down in my own life. I’ll spend a concentrated amount of time working on one or the other, really trying to focus on it so that I see the fruit of it in my life. Being the linear, logical guy that I am, I usually start with love and go from there. Being honest, though, as I work through love I eventually go to 1 Corinthians 13 and don’t get past the statement love is patient. I get frustrated (obvious lack of patience) and worried (not much peace in that statement) that I can’t seem to have a complete piece of fruit in my life.

The obvious problem with my outlook is that I think I’ll ever completely master kindness, self-control or that ever elusive patience. Bearing fruit doesn’t mean that you’ll have an entire orange to show off but rather the start of an orange that gets bigger over time. Bearing fruit doesn’t mean you’ll have an entire orchard of apples to harvest but rather the start of an orchard that over time will develop and grow. You know who taught me this? Students.

An even bigger problem than trying to master individual fruits in my own life, was my tendency to expect students to do the same. I was constantly frustrated and annoyed with the start and stop tendencies that students have towards spiritual development. It used to irritate me how one day a student would be faithful and then completely flake out the next week, day, hour or minute. It used to drive me crazy to see a student have complete peace at the end of a week at camp only to be an anxiety riddled mess the next time I saw them (sometimes less than 24 hours later). All of these things used to drive me up a wall until I stopped being a hypocrite and admitted that I’m often the same way. Spiritual growth isn’t a BMW bombing down a German autobahn as fast as it can but instead it’s often a car stuck in stop and go traffic that sometimes gets completely rerouted.

Rather than developing an entire piece of spiritual fruit in our lives, isn’t spiritual growth a lot more like a fruit salad? Exhibiting a bit of joy in one area is like adding a chunk of kiwi. Being gentle in a stressful circumstance is like dropping a bit of mango into the bowl. Over time, more and more fruit is added and a fruit salad is built. As you taste the salad and find a chunk of banana, you realize how good it tastes and want to add more. You remember what it took to add that piece of banana and you find yourself doing the same thing in other, similar circumstances. This is what students do all the time. They add little pieces here and there. As they grow, they’re not developing an entire pineapple but rather adding small chunks along the way. By the time they graduate from our ministries, many of them have the start of a beautiful fruit salad.

Maybe it’s a weird analogy but it’s helped me to celebrate what God is doing in my life and in the lives of students rather than get frustrated with what isn’t there. *Also, I’m not sure which fruit is the whipped cream but I’m desperately trying to figure it out because that is obviously the best part of a fruit salad.*

Buz is a special education teacher who passionately loves his ladies (wife and 2 daughters). They live in Spokane, Washington and you can check out his blog right here.