So I say, walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. For the flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, and the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want.
Galatians 5:16-17 (NIV)
The Promise and the Fight
The Galatians had been told they were free. Walk by the Spirit, Paul tells them, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Then he says what the walking is up against. The flesh desires what is contrary to the Spirit, the Spirit what is contrary to the flesh, and the two of them are in conflict with each other.
At the hardware store the woman behind the counter has answered the question about drill bits more times than she’s kept count of, and she answers it again early on a Saturday for a man who walked in already annoyed with her. She’s polite. She’s also running a sentence in her head that she won’t say, and it takes most of what she has not to say it. When he goes out she straightens the packets on the hook, which didn’t need straightening.
Paul agrees with the freedom and turns it toward serving one another in love, and he tells them what happens to people who bite and devour each other.
Then he writes the hard part plainly. They are in conflict with each other, so that you are not to do whatever you want. You do not stop wanting it because you decided against it, and a Christian in good standing looks exactly like a woman at a counter on a Saturday morning, with the packets straight and the sentence unsaid.
Anybody who has stood where she stands, in a kitchen or on a phone call, knows it, with the thing you wanted to say right behind your teeth. The promise is for you there. Walk by the Spirit, and you will not gratify the desires of the flesh. Paul says that to people with the fight going on inside them.
The quiet ones in a room are the ones I take to be fine, and I couldn’t tell you why I keep taking it that way.
She holds the sentence, and the Saturday goes on around her looking ordinary.
A Prayer to Remember
I lost my temper yesterday, and again last night, both times over something not worth it. I’ve stopped asking you to take the pull out of me, Lord, since it hasn’t moved in all the years I’ve asked. Give me ten seconds between what rises in me and what comes out of my mouth. I can do a lot with ten seconds.
In Jesus’ name I pray. Amen.
