A Soul Checkup – Goodness

The fruit of the Spirit is … goodness…. Galatians 5:22

The last years of my dad’s life were challenging. He had dementia. Of course, he thought he was perfectly fine despite the fact that he forgot how to operate the washing machine or even how to change the channel on the TV. So I stepped up my trips from Birmingham to Chattanooga to take him to the doctor, go through his mail, and basically be of whatever help I could be. That included frequent trips to the grocery store to get him food items that required no preparation when he got hungry.

I encouraged him to move to an assisted living facility, but he would hear none of it. Again, in his mind he was fine. Reluctantly, he agree to have outside help come in to clean the house, fix some meals and basically keep tabs on him. With that help and with the assistance of some people at his church, he managed to continue living on his own until he passed away shortly before his 88th birthday.

After his death, I spent several weekends getting his townhouse ready for sale. One weekend I went to the same grocery store where I had taken him many times. One of the checkout clerks recognized me and asked about my dad. I told her that he had passed away. She expressed her sympathy and then said, “Mr. Lee was a nice man. We looked out after him.”

I understood the nice part. My dad was a nice person. But I was puzzled by the “looking out after him” comment. Apparently, the clerk saw the confusion on my face and clarified it for me. “We’d make sure that he put his debit card back in the his billfold and that he took all of his groceries to the car, that sort of thing.”

I thanked her for caring for my dad and made my way out of the store touched by a flesh and blood example of another aspect of the fruit of the Spirit – goodness. The word Paul used in Galatians 5 means more than a mere absence of doing bad things. It’s an active goodness. It sees a situation and does something on purpose to make it better.

That store clerk was good to my dad, and I’m forever grateful. She didn’t have to do what she did. She could have taken advantage of him. She could have just ignored the need. But people with goodness in their souls don’t do that. They help. They make a difference.

As with all aspects of the fruit of the Spirit, this kind of goodness is not something that is reluctantly given. It comes out, because it’s what’s on the inside. People with goodness within can’t help themselves but to be good. They do good things, because that’s who they are. Expressing goodness is as natural as breathing.

The scripture says that Jesus went about doing good. I wonder at times what I go about doing. I hope that I will always remember that on any given day somebody’s dad, mom or other loved one may come across my path who needs for me to be good to them. More importantly, I hope that I’ll have the same kind of goodness in my soul that the grocery store clerk had in hers for my dad.

It’s what the world needs more of. Goodness.