Galatians 5:22-23   But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, ²³gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.

Have you ever considered the thought that we Christians should always be the best friends that anyone could possibly have?  We should be the best spouses; the best family members; the best workers; the best bosses; the best neighbors; the best strangers.

Taking this one step further, is the thought that anything less than that is missing our destiny of who God intends us as Christians to be.  Paul, in writing to the Corinthians describes the reality of what are lives are and are to be, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Our lives, like letters, are read by all the people we encounter, only the messages we communicate are far beyond just words.  Think of how differently we respond to encountering a neighbor’s pet that is always friendly versus encountering one that is grumpy or one that can be friendly but will also snap at you.   With the second one, we stay away; with the third one our guard is up.  We don’t want to be snapped at.

Applying the ‘pet-factor’ to our lives, ask the question, “What are we like?”  Are we grumpy?  Do we have a tendency to ‘snap’ unpredictably?  Do we have a tendency to be undependable or worse, to be jerks?  Or are we consistently someone that people enjoy being around because we reflect the qualities of our faith identified in today’s Scripture?  If asked to describe us (in an anonymous and candid survey) there wouldn’t be a ‘but’ in their description.

It’s critical that we recognize that our lives are about so much more than us.  We are an intimate part of God’s plan to reach and transform the world.  How we lead our daily lives has a profound impact on what our lives communicate.  Our destiny, corporately and individually, is to be a love letter from Jesus Christ to those around us.  So what are they reading when they encounter us?