Appearances Are Deceiving

I’m making my ritualistic granola today. One of the things I love to put in it is a freshly shredded apple.

As it is no longer apple season, the ones I find in the bottom of the fridge have lost their shine. Two tiny “Fred” apples? Or the large one? The largest one is worth my time—I’ll pitch the others. With all the sweeteners and spices covering it, it will provide the texture and nourishment I am looking for. I shut the door.

As I peel and grate, the memory of a hungry Rwandan comes back. One apple. That’s all it took for a great-fulled heart.

Tears run over the bowl, and I long for Your coming. When will You fill every hungry belly and make whole every gnarled limb? How does Your presence here inside me make use of that event? Will thanks well up with every piece of fruit? But it’s not as simple as gratitude, is it? It’s not about hunger or whole hands. It has nothing to do with what I can see. It isn’t about me repairing someones life—but You obliterating this one.

When You were here You fed every belly and healed every handicap. But more to the point, You fought and won the flesh death to raise us to Spirit life. You putty our twisted mind and saturate our murderous heart. Because I have lived in the perishable, I have considered your work unfinished. “Do not judge according to appearance.” That’s what You taught me.

Will I eat Your body and drink Your blood today?—“not as our fathers ate manna, and are dead.” Am I willing to sit, hear, and respond to the Father of my spirit conception? Or will I continue as a satisfied stillborn—the delivered dead?

You seek to turn me over as Your immortal daughter. To peel away the outer and bring aroma and sustenance to the inner. Can I take the sharp edge of truth—that I have already “passed from death to life.” And “It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me.” Can I “Walk in the Spirit?”—and “Lay down my life?”

If I shred it—all that appears to be true—could I possibly bloom into Your love child? “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” — “You in me, and I in you.”

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”

“It is finished!”