During the summer, we’re going through a sermon series on the Fruit of the Spirit together. Each week focuses on a specific fruit — looking at the fruit of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.
We’re also asking specific artists in our church to reflect, pray, and meditate on a fruit and then express their creativity through that word. The creative forms could be paintings, glasswork, pottery, music, poetry, or anything else that speaks to them.
During this week’s sermon, we talked about GENTLENESS as a Fruit of the Spirit. The artist, John Groth, expressed his creativity through a glass sculpture.
In my glass sculpture representing gentleness, God is within us. The Holy Spirit is depicted as being rooted and centered, extending upwards like flames. The gentleness of the Holy Spirit is flowing outwards from the base of the representation of the Holy Spirit, similar to the way vines grow outward. Inside the vines of glass are colors of glass as nourishment and seed. When I think of gentleness, what comes first to my mind is our five senses experiencing gentleness in taste, fragrance, touch, sound, and sight.
Then I think of our sixth sense, which is to recognize God’s small gentle voice. God is within us, teaching, directing, guiding, and counseling us. When we are humble and surrendered to Him, we can stop, slow down and notice His gentle voice. When fully surrendered to Him, we can hear His gentle voice. We can then seek and know His heart, purpose, and plan.
The small, gentle voice contains the seed of the fruit that is our sustenance and living water from the Spirit of God. We are not just God’s beautiful creation, hanging on the end of a vine. We are created to give others His sustenance, through us. It is God’s gentleness moving through us, that is intended to nourish others.
We also encourage YOU to create your own art during this Fruit of the Spirit series! Prayerfully consider one of the fruit words and then see how the Holy Spirit moves within you to create.
If you create artwork, we would love to see it and share it with others! Send us an email with your artwork attached.