On the return from my letterbox the other day, I stopped to pull some dead leaves off a plant I recently transplanted into my apartment block’s main garden. There were a number of dry ends and they didn’t look great.

Having looked at John 15 at church recently, my moment of gardening quickly made me think of Jesus’ words about being the true vine and removing the branches that don’t bear fruit.

I compared what I was doing with what Jesus says. He metaphorically prunes his people so that they bear more fruit. Not so that they look better.

It made me wonder about my behaviour as a Christian. Do I do acts of service that are merely fashionable, such as acts of kindness? Or are my acts of service aiming to produce fruit, which might mean I have to repent of my sin and recalibrate my thinking.

On the flip side, it made me think about how God knows that we are dust and even our greatest efforts still have sin attached to them. That’s just our human condition.

It also made me think about how we’re not aiming to make Christianity look bad. Why intentionally turn people off? That’s just a sadist martyr complex mixed in with self-righteousness.

It called to mind the phrase ‘adorn the gospel’. This idea comes from Paul’s letter to Titus. In this letter, Paul is telling his ‘true son in the faith’ what he needs to do to ‘straighten out’ the church in Crete (at that time).

Paul says that various groups are to be taught sound doctrine ‘so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Saviour attractive.’ Paul writes this in relation to Christian servants’ behaviour, but the application is broader.

So whilst I first thought my tidying up of a plant was an analogy of what we shouldn’t do as Christians, I then reconsidered.

If we’re just taking the soft road, deliberately not wanting to rock the boat of others or our own lives, then that’s a problem. Making faith fashionable so that we don’t have to change anything isn’t true faith; just some watered down Jesus-ism.

But there’s nothing wrong with showing the goodness of God. Because he is good. And who else will show people if we don’t? Is not that what we’ve been called to do?

Just like in the letter to Titus, chapter two, as everyone plays their God ordained part ‘no one will malign the word of God… because they have nothing bad to say about us.’

This is a beautiful thing.

It takes wisdom to navigate this path well, but with God’s help, anything is possible.

Yours choosing which boats to rock,

Alison