Football and Fruit

Yay for Labor Day Weekend! I hope everyone has enjoyed a long, relaxing weekend. And let's be excited...fall is coming quickly!

On Saturday, Jared and I made the long haul (except not at all long, luckily!) to Winston-Salem! We visited each parents' house, picked up some more of our belongings, and then all of us went to the Liberty vs. Wake Forest football game. Normally I would pull for Wake at a Wake game, but as a pastor's wife, I'm called to root for LU. :) We sat in our navy blue and red Liberty t-shirts in a midst of black and gold. Sadly, Liberty lost, but definitely held their own against Wake and only lost by 3 points! For the sake of Wake's fans, I hope that they play better the rest of the season than they did against LU. We can blame it on the rain, I suppose ;)

I love football games, mainly because I love football. I also love being around family while watching football, and people watching at games always promises to be entertaining. However, people watching only depressed me at the game on Saturday. A young married couple sat in front of us with their friends, most of which were probably a few years older than us. We deduced that they were Wake alum, with the exception of the wife in the couple in front of me. She was so excited to be at the game, and she was about one of the nicest people that I've ever briefly met. We talked for a short time at the beginning of the game (because I hit her with my rain poncho - oops) and she was very sweet.

As the game began, the wife cheered and yelled for Wake, and then cheered just as loudly for Liberty. She wasn't necessarily a fan of either, so I guess she figured she could pull for both teams equally. Her husband quickly turned to her, and with a very sharp tongue and colorful language, told her she couldn't cheer for Liberty. She was there to cheer for Wake.

Not long in to the first quarter, a Liberty player was knocked out cold on the field. I didn't see him get hit, but he didn't move a muscle as the pile of players slowly got off of him. The husband cheered and yelled and clapped as he watched the motionless player. She asked him to stop, and he said, "What? I don't care if he gets hurt!" The player eventually was helped off the field, and everyone in the stands clapped and cheered, WFU and LU fans alike...except for the guy in front of me.

As the game progressed and the guy shut down his wife, cussing, over and over and over again, her mood and body language quickly changed. She went from being peppy and clapping, to pulling her knees up, resting her chin on them, and hardly saying a word at all.

My impression of him was obviously not a very high one. I felt terrible for his wife, and wondered how anybody could ever be so rude to a young woman that seemed to be so nice. I was sad for both of them, and almost mad at a complete stranger.

Sunday morning in church, the pastor spoke out of John 15, the vine and the branches passage. I listened as he talked about producing fruit, and Jesus' call to the disciples to produce fruit. My mind immediately went to the Wake fan in front of me the night before. "What a lack of fruit," I thought. He was so openly and downright mean, there was no way he could produce fruit if he didn't change his attitude, I thought.

My thought process started changing, however. I consider myself a nice person. I started thinking about how many "nice" people there are in our world today. Nice people. The kind of people whose hearts get blessed on a regular basis. People that don't have a mean bone in their body and would never hurt a soul...but could it be possible that they are lacking fruit, too?

I was challenged by the sermon yesterday morning. I examined my own life, wondering what kind of fruit I was producing. Verse 13 of this passage says, "greater love has no one than this: to lay down one's life for one's friends." Jesus ultimately laid his life down for us at the end, but he laid his life down daily for his disciples and for the multitudes that he served. That is what true fruit looks like. How willing am I to do that, and how many friends do I have/know that would do that for me?

While you and I may not cuss and cheer when we see people unconscious on a football field, simply being nice to others is not what Jesus meant when he told us to bear fruit. Being nice is too easy. Stepping aside and getting yourself out of the way so that God can shine through...less easy! I am challenging myself to find ways to bear fruit, and I encourage you to do the same.

To live like Christ, we have to love like Christ. Think about how different our world would be if people stopped trying to simply be nice, and started truly living more like Christ lived. Pretty amazing, don't you think?