Thursday, September 19, 2013

A Lesson from the Banana

What a disappointment!  I was looking forward to having a banana smeared with peanut butter for my breakfast this morning.  But it was not to be.  When I peeled the banana, the entire thing was black.  Not a bruise here and there.  But black.  As in, rotten.

I've never had that experience with a banana before.  It looked great on the outside.  Perfectly yellow with just a few flecks of brown.  It felt like a banana should feel when it is perfectly ripe.  But it's what's on the inside that counts with a banana.  And what was on the inside was ugly.  Black.  Something was rotten in Denmark, if I may borrow a Shakespearean phrase.

Yuck.  No banana for breakfast today.

As I've been thinking about that banana, I have realized how often many of us are like that banana.  We look good on the outside.  But inside there's a blackness.  Anger.  Resentment.  Bitterness.  Sin.

We look good.  We may sound good.  We may even smell good!  But what's inside is rotten.  And it's what's inside that counts.

"Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me and know my thoughts.  And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting."  (Psalm 139:23-24)

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