Jenny’s letter 19th July
Dear Friends,
This week I have had the joy, and occasional exasperation, of looking after my daughter’s tiny dog, Olive. She is a Jack Russell–Dachshund cross, which means she is roughly twelve inches tall and appears to possess enough energy to power the National Grid. She is utterly adorable. She is also mischievous, determined, endlessly curious and completely convinced that the world exists for her entertainment.
How is it possible to love someone so much and yet find yourself saying, “Olive, honestly!” several times a day?
I suspect much of it is simply who she is. The qualities that make her exhausting are also the qualities that make her so delightful. Her courage, determination and zest for life are woven into her nature. Those qualities do not need eliminating; they need guiding. Given the right direction, they become strengths rather than problems.
Watching Olive made me wonder how often we do that with people. We are wonderfully quick to label someone as difficult, stubborn, lazy or over-sensitive, when perhaps we are only seeing part of who they are. Every personality has strengths and weaknesses. The very qualities that make someone extraordinary can also make them challenging at times.
Meanwhile, many of us have been following the men’s Football World Cup. England’s defeat to Argentina was hard to take. Argentina were relentless and deserved their victory, but I found some of the gamesmanship and aggression difficult to watch. Competitive sport needs passion, commitment and determination, but there is a fine line between fighting hard and losing sight of the values by which the game should be played. By the time you read this, England will have faced France in the third-place play-off. I shall certainly be hoping for a win, although not enough to stay awake into the early hours to watch it!
Perhaps Olive and the football both point towards the same truth. We all have strong personalities, strong opinions and strong emotions. The question is not whether we are strong characters, but whether we allow God’s Spirit to shape our character.
God never asks us to become someone else. He takes the people we are – the lively ones, the quiet ones, the determined ones, the cautious ones – and, by his Spirit, slowly shapes us into the likeness of Christ.
St Paul describes that transformation as producing lives marked by “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control” (Galatians 5.22–23). It is not about losing our personality. It is about allowing the very best of who we are to emerge, while letting God soften what has become sharp, redirect what has become destructive and strengthen what can become a blessing.
May God continue that gentle work in each of us this week.
Every blessing,
