Battle of the bakery box
Nancy Kennedy
When I was a kid, my grandmother owned a bakery.
Whenever we’d visit her, we would come home with huge pink bakery boxes filled with assorted butter cookies, plus bags of bagels and loaves of bread and the best cinnamon rolls and bear claws you could ever eat.
Some of my fondest and most shameful memories involve those pink bakery boxes of cookies.
Truly, I have eaten 100 times my weight in cookies in my lifetime.
For many years, I could not eat just one or two. It had to be all.
I would tell myself my lack of self-control was genetic and blame it on the pink bakery boxes of my childhood.
But the Bible says I DO have self control.
That’s one of those biblical mysteries. The Bible says those who are in Christ have all kinds of things — love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control, the “fruit of the Spirit” as it’s called.
It’s a mystery because if you know any Christians, chances are they’re not always loving and joyful, filled with peace, patient, kind and good, faithful, gentle and able to control themselves.
Maybe they are some of these some of the time, but most likely not all of these all of the time.
The Bible says those who belong to Jesus have “crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” and that now we live in freedom from the penalty and bondage of sin. But often we don’t.
For you it might not be cookies, but it’s something else that triggers a loss of control. Maybe your temper? Maybe your lust? Maybe your lack of caring for people triggers your disdain?
I remember after a cookie binge, telling myself: “You can’t be doing this anymore.”
And then I did it. Again.
But then one day I drove by a house with a huge garden out front. A man, all sweaty and dirty, was out in the hot sun on his knees pulling weeds among the rows of whatever it was that he was growing.
And whatever he was growing was lush and green and looked healthy and probably delicious.
The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
These attributes are also commands — love one another; be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, faithful in prayer; be kind, even to your enemies; don’t steal; tell the truth; forgive as you have been forgiven; show mercy; be self-controlled.
So, if it’s fruit, then we don’t manufacture it ourselves, and if it’s a command, then we’re responsible to do it.
But here’s my question: Does God do it in us — make us more kind, more gentle, etc. — or do we do it ourselves?
After some thought I’ve concluded the answer is yes.
Yes to both.
God does it and we do it. He starts it and he also enables us to do whatever it is he commands.
When I’m tempted to do wrong, he gives me the strength I need to resist, but I’m still the one who is supposed to do the resisting.
And if I don’t? If I still eat the cookies? If I lose my temper, if I’m not loving or kind?
The good news of the gospel assures me that I’m still his child. He still forgives and extends mercy and grace. And if I ask him, he will give me the self-control I need, even when there’s a pink bakery box full of cookies in front of me.
Even when I lose to the cookies, I never lose His love.Contact Nancy Kennedy at 352-564-2927 (leave a message) or email at nkennedy@chronicleonline.com.
