The Fruit Of Repentance

“Wild and lone the prophet’s voice, echoes through the desert still, calling us to make a choice, bidding us to do God’s will…. bear the fruit repentance sows: lives of justice, truth, and love. Trust no other claims than those.”  Beautiful words of an Advent hymn… bear the fruit of repentance…. and what is this fruit….lives of justice, truth, and love.

Repentance means changing direction…. it means I was heading south on the way to destruction and I did a 180. After repentance, I’m living a life which bears the fruit of justice, truth, and love. As described in Psalm One, I become a person  “whose delight is the law of the Lord and who ponders his law day and night…. like a tree that is planted beside the flowing waters, that yields its fruit in due season”…. “a good tree that bears good fruit.” (Mt. 7:17)

As former President Jimmy Carter once said, “if you were taken to court on the charge of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you.” Would your life of justice, truth, and love be enough to convict you? Hmmmmmm. If we obey the commandments of the Lord …. if we live out the beatitudes found in Matthew’s chapters 5,6,& 7 ….. if we love God and our neighbor as our self, then the answer is yes. It doesn’t mean perfection. It means our decisions are oriented toward loving God. If this orientation is right, the right fruit will follow. In time, more and more, our decisions will line up with the will of God. Our life will reflect this re-orientation  toward Christ.

So Advent is a good time to check our orientation. Is the needle still pointing True North…. toward Christ? Is our repentance bearing the right kind of fruit? If so, rejoice and keep going. If not, it’s time to reorient our self… to get back on track. Either way, it can be a good moment for us. Advent is meant to be a good moment for us…. a time of waiting, a time of preparing, a time of checking out how we’re doing. Any time the Holy Spirit is active in our life, it’s good news. Let’s keep going.