A Lesson from the Banana.

Have you ever had this experience? What a disappointment!  As I was looking at the bananas on the kitchen counter and considering my breakfast options this morning, my mind carried me back a few years. I remember it well.

On that morning, I was looking forward to having a banana smeared with peanut butter, a favorite breakfast treat. 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 had never had that experience with a banana before. Nor have I since. 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.

But thinking about that banana makes me realized how often many of us are just 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)