Right Fruit in the Right Basket

“ We need to learn how to keep people through love. Despite imperfections, sins, and irritating habits of other Christians, they belong to Jesus and they need our love as a healthy climate for growth.” ~ John Wimber


Looking back at my younger years in my spiritual life I can remember being a real basket case. Instead of a basket full of the fruit of the spirit I seemed to have a basket full of imperfections and flaws. In love, the church took me in and housed me until I was mature enough to go out on my own to face life as a Christian. In other words they loved me through until I was able to go through on my own.


My part to play in the whole ordeal was to take that love and use it as strength in which to grow in not as an excuse to stay weak. Indeed I could remain the basket case I was full of faults and mistakes or I could use their patience and love as an opportunity to get something good growing in my life. The right fruit in the right basket you might say.

As much as we would like to think it, none of us are born fully mature as we all start out spiritually immature. Too often we act like the child who gets referred to as, “Being two going on twenty” as we think we are far more mature than we really are.


In spite of wanting to “act like a grown up” we aren’t and we need the love of those who have gone before us to get us there. The minute we walk in the door we don’t need anyone coming up to us with a measuring stick to see how mature or grown up we are. However, as time goes on we should have our own quantifying rod to go by to see if we are making progress in our growth.


For example, as an older woman invited a young girl to Sunday service the young girl declined saying, “I usually have a hangover on Sunday morning, I can’t come.” The older lady replied, “So, come anyway.” Eventually the younger girl did just that, hangover and all. It was an act of love on the part of the one that got the other coming. Time would pass and spiritual growth was reached.


Today she now is the “older woman” (if she’ll forgive me for using that phrase on her, ha ha) helping those once caught in her position. There was no measuring stick coming in but she eventually had her quantifying rod to see how far she had gone. To her it would be a tool that gave her confidence to reach out in that same kind of love. The love of those who belong to Jesus helping others get the right fruit in the right basket!

© 2011 Karen J Gillett @ Pencil Marks and Recipes Publishing