When I think about obedience to commands. I suppose that betrays my gut assumption about what sort of person gives commands: Someone difficult to please, who is just setting up hoops to jump through, who is carefully screening my every move for every misstep that warrants correcting.

I fear failing. And there is no joy in fear. It’s rather miserable, honestly. And no teeth-gritting obedience will force the joy to bubble up to the surface. As long as the fear is there, it will stay bottled up.

I remember the orange trees in our neighbor’s yard. Up the hill from our house, too high to reach and too steep to climb. For most of the year I didn’t notice the trees. As a child, I wasn’t very impressed with simple green leaves. But then, when the season arrived, those bright orange globes would catch my eye from a block away. I can recall standing at the bottom of the hill, dreaming of how I might reach them. Somehow their unreachable height made them that much more desirous.

The amazing thing was that our neighbor with the orange trees was crippled. If I recall, he had fallen a far distance down while serving on a Navy ship, damaging his spine, and losing most of the use of his legs. He walked with two crutches with arm braces. I remember being dumbfounded that he could drive. And that he could tend his orange trees. He accomplished things and created beauty in ways beyond my understanding.

Is that a plant that is not bearing fruit is a waste of resources. Whether it’s literal fruit, or a berry, or a vegetable, or the simple beauty of a flower, if a plant is not fully doing what it was created to do, if it’s not living up to its full “plantness,” then what’s it all for?

It’s taking up space in the bed, it’s absorbing nutrients, it’s potentially blocking other plants from the sun, it’s taking up time and attention and energy from the gardener—and producing nothing in return. Take. Take. Take. Take. Take. No give.

Remain. Linger. Tarry. Persist. Pause. Continue. Endure. Last. Live. Abide. Dwell. Rest. Reside. Squat. Stick around. Stay put. Camp out. Cling to. Put down roots. Hang on for dear life.

This is the main task of a disciple of Jesus. Then comes the fruit. Being with always precedes doing for. Intimacy and connection are the horses pulling the cart of worship and service. Never the other way around.

Don’t get me wrong, you can fake it for a while. Much of our church culture is certainly set up to support and encourage that. I’ve certainly done that, and probably for long seasons of life, if I’m honest.

And has been ever since “the beginning,” as Genesis depicts it. Not only creating elements out of nothing just by his word, but planting, tending, watering, nourishing, pruning, and in general seeing to the full flourishing of the entire cosmos.

And at the center of it all, (at least metaphorically, and at least here on Earth), was an actual garden. A verdant, lush landscape that was the ideal location for humanity to begin. And not only begin existing, but begin relating to God and to one another.

Is a hard thing for many of us to believe in. Satan. The Enemy. Beelzebul. The Prince of Demons. Whatever you want to call him, images that we can see quickly overshadow any reality that we can’t see, making the whole notion seem rather fictitious. Like Vader, or Sauron, or Voldemort, the Wicked Witch of the West, or the guy in red tights with a pointy tail and a pitch fork. They all make the idea of a supernatural evil being seem like ancient mythology, or sci-fi fiction, or religious fake news.

But then, if we’re going to take Jesus seriously at all, we have to reckon with the fact that he took the idea of a singularly evil being quite seriously himself. And that he seems to understand some things about this being that may clash with our fictitious images:

Are a dime a dozen. Well, really they’re usually a lot more expensive than a dime.

Want to live a more peaceful and full life? Buy this product. Upgrade to this device. Visit this exotic location. Take this course. Eat this. Drink that.

I’ve heard it said that each of us is like an empty chalkboard, waiting to be filled up. We must be taught and instructed and trained throughout our lifetime to do just about everything. We depend on others, whether parents or teachers or friends or mentors or authors—even others who are perhaps unqualified or unwitting—to scrawl their wisdom onto our hearts and minds.

But then, of course, we accidentally brush our shoulders against the board, smearing the chalk. Life has a way of blurring sections into a big smudgy mess. Or someone walks by and intentionally drags their mischievous hand across it as they pass, like a punk middle schooler.

Love is a Four-letter word. Literally. In English, at least. So also is the Spanish verb, now that I think about it: amar. A quick Google search shows that this is also largely an English-speaking phenomenon. But you get the point.

Obedience is also a four-letter word. Metaphorically. Again, at least to most Western, English-speaking ears. We don’t like to be told what to do. We prize our self-determination above almost all else. We like to believe, at least, that we are our own masters, that we have made up our own minds and do only what we want to do. For the most part we’ll be compliant with the law, but the idea of plain-old obedience rubs against independent grain.

Is not fully love. Love must be external. Visible. Manifest. Tangible. Able to be heard and seen and experienced. Full love is more action than emotion, more doing than feeling. It’s more about decision than desire, more about practice than passion.

Feelings are fine as far as they go. The funny thing about feelings and actions when it comes to love, is that the loving feelings can either precede or follow loving actions. Sometimes we are compelled to do something because we feel a swell of love for someone. Sometimes we find that we truly feel love for someone once we have done something loving for them.