Fruits of the Spirit: Faithfulness
Staying true to the God who stays true to us
Hello, friends!
We’re in the last few weeks of this series where each week we find a few different angles into one of the fruits of the Spirit. Our goal has not been to fully understand or adopt these virtues, but to explore their many facets, letting God show us where they are growing and lacking in our lives. We are seeking to embody them in some formative way for the good of our souls.
This week, we come to faithfulness. As an Enneagram 6, this is right up my alley. Sometimes when we talk about faithfulness, it sounds mostly like, “Be really good.” Let’s find a way into faithfulness that looks beyond our efforts to the beautiful picture of God’s faithfulness working itself out in our lives.
Among the relatively few artistic renderings of the story of Ruth (truly, the lack of artwork out there on Ruth is confounding), I am strangely drawn to the painting above by Polish-born Israeli artist Shlomo Katz. This work is one of three paintings in a series titled “Brotherhood” which hangs in the Jewish Chapel in the United States Air Force Academy Cadet Chapel in Colorado Springs. (Fun fact: I was born at the USAFA hospital.) The dramatic moment of Boaz, choosing faithfulness to God’s ways, meeting Ruth, who has chosen faithfulness to the people among whom God has placed her, evokes in me a powerful response. In that small space between their hands, two fragile humans embody the giving and receiving of God’s faithful presence.
I’ll confess that I find the meditation on religious devotion by an Israeli artist in a US military chapel troubling. Yet, all three of the pieces in this series are undeniably worth our attention. Perhaps our unsettledness offers an entry into deeper reflection on the contradictions and blindness we so often live in, even as we seek to understand and inhabit the fruits of the Spirit?
Breathe
Choose among the offerings below to help you pause briefly and see where faithfulness is showing up in your life.
Sit with a passage from Scripture, letting it call you into faithfulness:
Ruth 1:6-22 (or just read the whole book!) - How do we see the faithfulness of a person (Ruth, Boaz) interplay with God’s faithfulness here? How do they work together to co-create God’s story?
Reflect with God on how faithfulness is living in you:
Where am I experiencing the faithfulness of God in my life?
Where am I being called to faithfulness in my life?
How am I longing for more faithfulness in my life?
Bring your body and mind together with a breath prayer:
Inhale
Every morning
Exhale
Great is Your faithfulness
Behold
This extended practice can help you explore our theme of faithfulness more deeply.
One way I like to define faithfulness is as staying true: God stays true to who God is and we stay true to who we are in Christ. God, as the ultimate keeper of promises, has assured us through Christ that we can rest in God’s trustworthiness. Whether or not you spent time crafting a seasonal rule of life with us a few weeks back, let’s take some time now to listen for how God is inviting you to stay true in this current season of your life.
Find some quiet space. You might want to bring a journal with you for this one. Calm your body with a few deep breaths and a minute or two of silence, then let’s start with a simple examen.
Look for the consolations: Where is God breathing life into you? Where are you finding healing or growth? Where are the other fruits of the Spirit bursting forth in small or big ways?
Reckon with the desolations: Where does it hurt? What’s happening in you as your longings go unmet? Does God feel distant? Where is grief living for you? How is change unsettling and discomforting you?
It often helps to write these things down in paragraphs, notes, bulleted lists, or whatever helps you get it out and see it in front of you. Once you feel like you’ve gotten a rough sketch of your examen, sit with it in silence for 2-3 minutes. Let God illuminate it for you. Where does your attention go? Does anything new come up?
Take what you’re noticing and shift now into imagining how you can continue to stay present to what God is already up to.
Choose one thing to say no to in the next few weeks in order to allow yourself to stay true to what God is showing you. Then, choose one thing to say yes to in order to do the same. What will you let go of and what will you embrace? These might be habits, practices, prayers, or material things. Ask God to guide your thinking and don’t be afraid to be creative. Then, write it down.
Sit with what you’re committing to. Remember that this is all in service of placing ourselves back in the pathways of peace, the way of Jesus where we might find the faithfulness of God has already been opened for us. Talk with God about it for as long as you like, then move on from this time trusting that God stays trust to you even when you struggle to stay true to God.
If you’re comfortable doing so, please share what you’re releasing and what you’re embracing in this season in the comments.
Blessing
Suggestions for continuing to explore our theme and a benediction.
Tomorrow (July 22) is the Feast of St Mary Magdalene, the Apostle to the Apostles. Celebrate the life of this remarkable and faithful woman by baking spiced cupcakes or burning a myrrh-scented candle, as discussed here. Or maybe tell someone the good news of who you’ve experienced Jesus to be.
Give a listen to this favorite marching hymn: God’s Highway by Sandra McCracken echoes the give and take of God’s faithfulness as we walk in the way of Jesus. We hold on to God as God holds on to us. Our faithfulness does not save us, but the picture of the gospel is incomplete without this beautiful reciprocity.
In the season of Pentecost, this simple Bible study invites us to reflect on the Spirit’s movement using two pieces of artwork on Ruth from the Masai Bible.
Your steadfast love, O LORD, extends to the heavens,
your faithfulness to the clouds
Ps 36:5