Fruitful Peace

By Christopher R. Cole

When the Apostle Paul wrote about “the fruit of the Spirit” (Galatians 5:22-23), I’m nearly 100 percent positive he didn’t have “the holiday season” (the time around Thanksgiving and Christmas in the United States of America) in mind. It’s ironic that the days near these holidays include some of the most hectic, least peaceful moments for many of us. For pastors such as myself, adding to this time of seemingly endless consumerism and “finding the perfect gift” is trying to present the familiar story of Advent and the arrival of Jesus into this world in flesh and blood in a new and refreshing way.

This time, however, it began differently than it has in years past. My wife, Buffy, and I make an annual Thanksgiving trip to western New York state to spend time with my family from our home in south central Kentucky. Making this trip has become more important to us in the last three years since an auto accident left my dad paralyzed from his rib cage down. As we were making the plans to visit him and the rest of my family, I was let go of my secular employment.

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“Peace wasn’t the flavor of the fruit of the Spirit we were tasting.”

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Over the next couple of days, as Buffy and I adjusted to my stay-at-home status, we received some news we had been praying for over the last five years: We would become foster parents to a young lady who really needed a home, love, and a lot of attention. As happy as we were that this was finally happening for us, a real possibility set in: Would we even be able to go on this trip now that we would have someone to look after? Peace wasn’t the flavor of the fruit of the Spirit we were tasting. Getting her a doctor’s appointment and enrolled in school, wondering if she could come with us or would have to stay with a respite family for a week, or if we would just have to call off the trip remained at the forefront of our thoughts. Sure, we prayed, but the prayers were more of the “help” variety.

As it turned out, she was able to go with us. We got in all her appointments, and she was enrolled in school before we left. It was beginning to look like we could have that elusive peace. Soon though, the realities of fostering a young teenager shattered that belief. A 14-hour car ride will do that to anyone, but as we hadn’t yet been together a full week, we were about ready to get to know each other a whole lot better.

It’s funny how — no matter how much you think you can prepare for something and plan on having a lovely holiday with family — something unexpected will happen. Our vehicle notified us that our coolant level was low. When we stopped to get some coolant, a very loud and unsettling noise came from our vehicle. My wife and I just looked at each other with that look that says, “That’s not good.” Sure, we could be thankful, even grateful, that we were near my parents’ home, but our plans for having a lovely, peaceful family gathering suddenly were replaced with me trying to find a garage that would look at our vehicle a couple of days before a major holiday.

I found a garage and got the problem fixed, but reality began setting in once again: How were we going to get our foster child back to Kentucky to begin school if we didn’t have a vehicle we could rely on? Would I be able to get the vehicle in very early Monday morning while Buffy and our foster daughter flew back? I wasn’t working an outside job anymore although we had some money in savings.

Blessing and Giving

It was then that the peace of God had taken over. Just that morning as I participated in my parents’ devotional time together, they were reading out of Psalm 1 on the differences between the blessed and the wicked. The blessed are those who delight in the Lord, and since my father’s accident, they have taken that more to heart than I had seen them before (though they’d always been very generous). They had long since realized that using what they have to bless others is part of delighting in God blessing them. They could see that Buffy and I were really struggling to figure out what to do, especially since it was no longer just us we needed to consider. They ended up helping us get a brand-new vehicle without any expectation of us ever paying them back. It’s not something we asked them to do; they made the offer.

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“Kindness and self-control often seem to be the polar opposites of what this season has become.”

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The reality of their generosity began to set in, and I came to an important realization. There’s so much about this time of year that, despite “Thanks” being in the name of Thanksgiving, thankfulness and gratitude quickly give way to mad dashes to buy things that we probably don’t need but want. Love and joy give way to greed and discontentment. Commercials for the latest, fastest, biggest (or smallest) and most powerful command our attention. If that isn’t bad enough, the day after Christmas is dedicated to returning gifts that didn’t quite hit the mark.

Beyond that, things like kindness and self-control often seem to be the polar opposites of what this season has become. Sometimes it feels like we, as Christians, get as much caught up in the cycle as everyone else does. Yet there was my dad — in his wheelchair, robbed of so much he and my mom looked forward to doing in their retirement years — saying that they were making the choice to bless us and not thinking twice about it, and for us to just accept it. My dad — who because of his condition has every right to be mad at the person responsible — has chosen to forgive instead and live in gratitude for every single day he’s given.

Irreplaceable Love

Then I also realized that now I’ll have a young lady who has been cheated out of so much in life looking up to me and my wife, hoping someone will just give her a chance. There is no amount of “things” or “stuff” she can be given that can replace the love and attention of a family, especially one that loves and serves our Lord and strives to be more and more like Him each day. I see great examples of that in my own parents, and I hope to be even half as good as they were in raising me. As the situation with our vehicle was resolved, thanks to the peace of God showing up through my parents and into the rest of us by their example, we ended up having that lovely, peaceful family gathering I envisioned us having.

Sometimes it takes an extraordinary set of circumstances to remind us that Jesus offers us love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control while the world can only offer us a cheap imitation of those. It’s easy to lose sight of, but once we’ve tasted that fruit, can we really settle for anything less? +