By Joy Wong

Greetings to you all this morning — the first day of 2024! I hope this morning finds you all well, with hope and expectancy for what the Lord shows us this year.

Each year, we choose a new set of themes to blog about, and while brainstorming what themes to choose, a suggestion came to blog on the fruit of the Spirit. I dismissed the idea quickly, thinking surely in the last 15+ years that our blog has been in existence, we’ve already covered the fruit of the Spirit! But I was wrong. Scrolling back through past blogs starting from when we first began, using the search function in vain, I found mentions here and there on the fruit of the Spirit, but no reflections that we have done as a collective.

When I think of the fruit of the Spirit, I admittedly find it all too simple. Perhaps it was from the memories of singing about the fruit of the Spirit in children’s ministry (for what could be more accessible to the understanding of a child than fruit)? Or memorizing and rattling off the list of the fruits of the Spirit in youth group, like I was earning a badge of honor?

Now as an adult, I’m realizing some things… that while fruit was easily accessible to me as a child, it certainly is not accessible for everyone in the world. And I’m also starting to feel that as simple as the fruit of the Spirit sounds, there seems to be a scarcity of it these days… in society, in the world, in the Church, and if I’m honest, in me as well.

With these ruminations, we chose to kick off our year with reflections on the “Spirit-Led Life” as well as some other themes drawn from Galatians 5:13-25, and then to finish off the rest of the year with each month focusing on a fruit of the Spirit, with our lens as Asian American women in present or past ministry, reflecting on the Church, our culture, our life season, and what God is revealing and teaching to us. May you and I — and the Church — find new footing as we ponder what it means to be filled with the Spirit, and what it looks like to become an outpouring of the Spirit in whoever we are, whatever we do, and wherever we go.

Joy Wong has an MDiv from Fuller Theological Seminary, a BA in English from Princeton University, as well as four years’ experience in industrial distribution management.  She is a contributing author to Mirrored Reflections: Reframing Biblical Characters, published in September 2010.