Blog

The time will come when we have to say, “Good night.” When that night comes there will be tears. My hope for my family and friends is that there will be a greater volume of tears of joy than of sorrow. There will be both. But let the joy overwhelm the sorrow.
For the Christ follower, the worst that can happen here brings entry into Heaven.

I wrote the above from a hospital bed on the cardiac floor of Hoag hospital in Newport Beach, California on October 20, 2020. I was there because of two heart attacks three days apart several weeks earlier. The day before that, I was on an operating table prepared for bypass surgery. Knowing that it was expected to take several hours, I was surprised when I woke up 30 to 45 minutes later and was told that surgery had to be aborted. There were clots that could have broken loose as the surgeon handled my heart and have gone into my brain.

Not so incidentally, this was in the early months of the Covid pandemic. I was aware that my wife and sons, and many others who were unable to visit me were extremely concerned. Indeed, it made me keenly aware of the reality of my mortality. My cardiologist assured me that I was not a “walking timebomb” and that my treatment could be managed with medication.

What I found remarkable was that I didn’t have a sense of fear. Instead, I had what I can only describe as what the Bible calls “the peace of God which surpasses all understanding” in Philippians 4.

Now, five years after the heart attacks that had me prepped for surgery in 2020, I am scheduled for surgery in the same hospital to repair the damage done back then. This is to involve repairing my heart where the aneurysm is. It may involve repairing or replacing a valve and will include a single bypass.

I noted in the 2021 version of this note, that I didn’t fear death. I still don’t. I look forward to heaven. I really do. But I want to complete God’s purpose for my life before I go. I believe that includes assuring that my offspring and all in my sphere of influence understand the Gospel well enough to choose to place their trust in Christ and follow Him.

My prayer as I prepare for the surgeon’s table is that God will be glorified in how my family and I handle the process and the outcome and that all who observe will be pointed to Christ.

Because He lives,
Gary

John 15

I was enjoying a tasty cluster of grapes the other day.
As I picked one off its stem I realized that all the delicious juice inside had passed through that now dry stem.
Then I thought about the seeds contained in the fruit – seeds  which can reproduce hundreds of new plants!
And that dry twig? It once was attached to a vine which pumped every drop of life through it to the cluster of grapes (“two or three gathered together”).
My mind took me to John 15:4-5 where Jesus said,
“Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me. I am the vine; you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing.” 

More on grapes

As I’ve considered this further, I realize that the stem that reaches the grapes is not the branch. The stem is part of the cluster that is picked along with the grapes. The branch remains for another season to produce more clusters. That’s “clusters“ – plural. My little stem of grapes was a small part of just one cluster among many others picked from just one branch on the vine. As individual branches attached to the vine, we can bear MUCH fruit – many clusters of fruit, stems with multiple grapes – as long as we remain attached to the vine.

The fruit of the spirit is a cluster, not a bunch of separate characteristics that we try to achieve, one at a time. We might try that, but as fruit of the Spirit, they all come together. “The fruit of the Spirit is…” not “the fruits of the Spirit are …”. It’s the work of Christ in us that produces the fruit. We can’t produce full clusters of fruit without connection to the vine.

“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 (ESV)

Am I producing the fruit of the Spirit as I interface with the world? Or am I yielding sour grapes?

Are you?

And BTW, shouldn’t we be expecting to see the fruit of the Spirit in leaders who claim to be Christians?

Is that what we’re seeing?