The Importance of Punctuation
I don't know if you remember the book Eats, Shoots & Leaves but as a young man who struggled with punctuation it was a fun read. The only thing I remember about the book was the illustration on the cover. Where you put the comma matters. Does a panda eat shoots and leaves or does the panda eat (comma/stop) shoots (as in a gun) and leaves? Two totally different stories based on where you put a comma. The importance of commas jumped to my attention with Paul's words in Galatians 5:22-23. The problem is that the original Greek has no punctuation. It looks like this:
ὁ δὲ καρπὸς τοῦ πνεύματός ἐστιν ἀγάπη χαρὰ εἰρήνη, μακροθυμία χρηστότης ἀγαθωσύνη, πίστις πραΰτης ἐγκράτεια
Most bibles put the comma after each word in the list:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
JB Lightfoot's commentary on Galatians in 1870 points out the difficulty of translating a list. He suggested that the list falls into three groups of three each. The first three describe the mind of the Christian, the second three our interactions with our neighbor, and the last three principles that guide a Christian's conduct. It would then be punctuated as follows:
But the fruit of the Spirit is love joy peace, patience kindness goodness, faithfulness gentleness self control
... (ESV)
Christian Schwarz, a modern German philosopher and theologian, suggests that what Paul is really describing for us is the characteristics of Love. Paul is describing what love looks like very similarly to 1 Corinthians 13 (the Love chapter). The punctuation for the verse should be like this:
"But the fruit of the Spirit is love: joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control."
The message here is that love is evident when these things are in your life joy, peace, etc.. Where you put the comma, the pause, in your life is huge. February is the Month of Love so how much evidence for love do people see when they look at you? (i.e. joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control)
Where do you put the comma (the pause) in your life? What if you put a comma in your life when you got angry, or wanted to give someone a piece of your mind? What if you built a pause into your life daily to spend time with God? What if you built a pause into your life daily to do nothing…to just enjoy the beauty of the earth, or count your blessings one by one? Where you choose to put the commas in your life could be a game changer.
I pray your life is filled with love all month long.
Ron
