The Fruits of the Spirit are Lemons, Jazz Apples, Pears…

On Sunday, Maddie and I went to St Albans URC on Homewood Rd to deliver our bi-annual Parade Service. With the Cubs, Scouts, Guides, Brownies and Beavers that meet at the church in attendance, it’s always a great opportunity to share something about the Christian faith in a fun and engaging way.

For this service, our theme was the Fruit of the Spirit- inspired by our theme for the year, ‘keep in step with the Spirit’ (Galatians 5:25).

You may be wondering what lemons, jazz apples and pears have to do with the Fruit of the Spirit. We started the service with a challenge. Three blindfolded young people had to describe a three different fruits to their partner simply by feeling them (or a few less points if they needed to have a look at the fruits). All 9 fruits started with the same letter as the Fruit of the Spirit, as illustrated by the image below, kindly created by Maddie’s sister who is currently studying illustration at university.

We gave a biology lesson on how fruit actually grows (which is not by a branch through sheer determination willing the fruit to appear) and the importance of being connected to the source to get the nutrients and sugars needed.

We shared stories of how the Fruit of the Spirit has been grown in our lives by remaining connected to God (the source/vine) and we reflected on Morgan Freeman’s insightful comment while playing God in Evan Almighty – “If someone prays for patience, you think God gives them patience? Or does he give them the opportunity to be patient?”

It was another fantastic event with lots of great comments and we look forward to returning in March for our next service.

Geoff