We've almost reached the end of these reflections on the fruit of the Spirit, and I imagine

you know Paul's words by heart now. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,

kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no

law. Today's fruit is surely one of the most attractive. It's maybe not the biggest or brightest

looking, but I wouldn't be surprised if it's one that the Spirit especially delights to produce

in us, even though it's rarely mentioned in the Bible. It's gentleness. It's a word that's used

several times by the Apostle Paul, but it's not always translated in the same way. Sometimes

it's translated as kindness, and that's interesting, isn't it? I suppose the tradition of the

translation gentleness instead of kindness is just to distinguish two qualities that really

belong together. Kind people are gentle, and gentle people are kind. And like all the other fruit

of the Spirit, they belong together. In a sense, actually, the fruit of the Spirit are all

one fruit, but we need to think more about that. Forgive me if you hate the game of golf and

think it's just a good walk spoiled, but here's a golfing illustration, although I suspect it's

true of other sports as well. If you watch golf on TV, you'll hear the commentators talking

about a player having soft hands. It means they grip the club gently, even when they grip it

securely. It's kind of counter-intuitive when you begin, and it remains counter-intuitive for

many golfers at last. They think the really important thing is how tightly they hold the club,

and they don't understand that the really important thing is how the other end of the club,

the club face, makes contact with the ball. And a tight grip instead of a gentle one,

often means that the ball veers off to the right, or to the left, and ends up in the rough,

or in a sand trap, or even out of bounds. I think that's maybe a parable of the Christian life.

If you don't live with a gentle spirit, if you grip things tightly in order to control them,

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