Damaged Fruit

My mother has several Chinese Grapefruit (a.k.a Pomelo) trees in her garden at home and every year her trees produce a whole lot of fruit. She brings them to a local Asian market to sell, and her grapefruit has a reputation in the community for being less sour and more sweet.

When she collects the fruit for the market she gives them the biggest ones with perfect skin without any blemishes. She knows that the ones with the damaged skin will be rejected by customers and ultimately returned to her, so she keeps the tarnished, misshapened and damaged fruit for herself and the family.

The ones with the damaged skin have been affected by the hot and cold temperatures swings, too much or not enough sun, more or less rain throughout the season and periods of severe wind.

When talking about the damaged fruit she said an interesting thing.

From her experience, the damaged ones that appear more weathered and scarred from the harsh weather are SWEETER. She noted that "Mother nature is funny like that." To which I responded, "You mean, God is funny like that."

If the customers knew that while inspecting the fruit, those weather damaged or misshapened fruit skins probably meant the fruit inside was sweeter, they would look out for the not-so-perfect ones.

I once read in the news that a government report discovered that stressed fruit has more antioxidents and flavonoids. The belief is that perhaps it must increase the antioxident production to strengthen itself to endure through stressful growing period.

Read this: Stressed fruit may be better for you

This is just like so many of us.

Each of us have weathered through tough times of suffering, heart ache, rejection, depression or sadness which has tested our faith.

So many lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people have gone through hell from the people among them who have made every step of their lives a difficult one. Whether family, friends, peers or strangers, we have weathered physical and psychological abuse, discrimination, scorn, humiliation, name calling, self-loathing, prejudice, rejection, etc. You name it.

We are no different than other people who experience their own traumas and each of us has some sort of cross to bear.

How we turn out after these periods of trial, struggle and testing, depends so much on our own spirit, strength, perseverence, patience and outlook.

Some of us, have grown stronger, wiser and more resilient. Others may not be so fortunate and may suffer depression, rebellion, bitterness, anger, substance abuse, acting out and for some...suicide.

Life is hard and not everyone is able to come out of it unscathed. For those who seek Jesus to help us through our journey, He is able to give us His strength through the realities of this harsh world. Many of us will attest that it was only because of Him, that we have come out stronger, healthy, wiser and sweeter.

God is funny like that. Thank you Lord!

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