Bruised Peaches

{Image Source}

Monday. It was this past Monday.

I had burned up my weekend at work and Monday was my first day off in a while. I woke up energized and ready for the day. I had big plans! Admittedly, those plans began- and were subsequently fueled by- some good coffee, but that's beside the point, really. :)

We had 2 boxes of fresh peaches burning a hole in our fridge (not literally, lol) and my mom and I were gung-ho to work with them. We had planned to peel them, cut them, and then bake them up into some fresh deliciousness! I love to bake, so this prospective project made me very happy.

As we set the boxes onto the countertop to begin working with the peaches, I noticed something that made the whole endeavor seem less appealing. All the peaches were bruised and battered. There were black spots and mushy sides littering the surface of those golden pink surfaces.You could see where some of them had over-ripened and were borderline starting to turn unusable.

Mom looked at me and I at her... "Well, at least we're baking them."

We both inhaled sharply and set to work. These peaches were a mess. The peels didn't want to separate from the flesh. The flesh didn't want to separate from the core. The bruises went deep into the center of the fruit. The outside flesh was so battered and soft that it simply mushed at our touch and the flesh nearest the core was hard and green still. Such a mixture of beaten exterior and tough interior I had never before seen in a peach.

But, thinking back now, I had noticed that blend of pain and bitterness before somewhere.

And quite often.

The same combination can be found in the eyes of millions of people across this wide globe.

I've seen that scarring in the worry lines of the single parent trying to make a life for herself and her family.

I've seen that bruising in the wince of the young person trying to navigate through life after years of mental abuse.

I've seen the hard center in the forced smile of one attempting to piece together some semblance of a life after making that one big mistake.

Hurt, heartache, and hardships bruise the flesh of even the most resilient among us.

We’re all broken. Whether we’re apt to admit it or not, we are. There are shattered pieces inside of us that mar the delicate beauty that is us. We are, in a way, like that box of beaten up orchard peaches.

The bruised and hard portions of those peaches’ flesh made them almost undesirable for much of anything. You couldn’t rightly cut them up and eat them raw in that state. No, they wouldn’t have been suitable for that; what with such large overripe areas and rotten pits, they might’ve even made one sick.

Mom and I could’ve easily taken one look at the fruit and decided to pitch them out back because they would require too much effort to repurpose. We could’ve allowed them to stay in their crate, passively letting the rot continue, until they were completely unsalvageable. We could’ve refused to accept them when they were given to us simply because we knew that they would require a whole ton of effort.

But we didn’t.  

She and I muddled through those 2 boxes of peaches on Monday. We carefully peeled the skin away from the flesh and removed the rotting cores. We cut out the unusable, bruised and brown portions, and thinly sliced the sweet yellow portion. After that, I turned those slices into a couple of pies and one laaaaaarge deep dish cobbler. By the time the baking process was complete, you couldn’t even tell what those peaches once looked like. With the addition of some sugar, butter, flour, and cinnamon, they had been completely transformed from rotting flesh into some pretty yummy treats (If i may say so myself….).

Y’all, this is what God’s grace does for us.

Picture with me, if you’ll allow this metaphor for a moment, that you- your life- is a peach. As corny as that sounds, bear with me please. Think over that life. Factor in everything you’ve fought through. If each one of the hardships you’ve survived was a single drop of that peach onto the ground beneath you, picking the fruit back up only to drop it again with the next hardship endured, how bruised up would the flesh of your peach be? With bruising accelerating the rate at which the outside of the flesh ripens (and subsequently rots) faster than that of the internal fruit, would you be left with an evenly ripe fruit (from little to no bruising) or a partially hard/partially squishy one as an outward testament to the damage it’s suffered?

Looking back over my life, the flesh of my peach would be fairly bruised and I know for a fact that I have a few hard spots within me. Well… let’s face it… I’m a wreck of a peach!

What about you, my friend?

Are there ever days where you feel so beaten down that you haven’t even the strength to look up?

Do you ever feel hopeless where you are?

Do you ever have moments where you feel as though you’ve ruined everything for yourself that there couldn’t possibly be any hope of redemption for your feeble life?

Have you ever considered that the world might just be better if you were no longer spoiling its remaining population?

Well you, you beautiful hurting soul, I’m talking to you.

I can’t offer you eloquent words and profound speech. I can’t offer you philosophical reasoning or a glimpse into how your future will improve with just three easy steps. I can’t. I’m not that powerful an individual.

But I can offer to share with you the hope that I have found. I can tell you a little bit about the redemption that has transformed my own hurting soul and that could transform yours as well.

You see, there’s this thing called grace. God’s grace. Grace, simply put, is unmerited favor. It’s receiving something that you did nothing to earn. Grace is someone doing something for you that you can’t ever pay them back for. Grace is the Lord working in the heart of a hurting 13 year old girl, gently whispering to her that, though she isn’t strong enough to go this life alone, He will always be there with her to give her the strength to continue the fight. That girl was me.  And grace, for you, may look very different than mine did, does; but it’s still available to you.

The Lord picked up my life and began to transform the mess that it was. He peeled away the tough skin and cut out the decaying portion. The Lord isn’t finished with me yet. There is still quite a number of hard parts and bruised pieces, my core still is a touch rotten, but He’s sanctifying me day by day.

Your life, in whatever state it’s in, isn’t too far gone. I promise you. No matter how many times that life-peach has been dropped, no matter how damaged your flesh is, no matter how disgustingly moldy or bitterly hard your core is, YOU ARE NOT TOO FAR GONE. Allow the Lord, in His endless grace, to begin to work within you. Allow Him to cut away the nasty portions of your life and to redeem that in you which is still sweet and good and useable.

2 Corinthians tells us “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has past away, the new has come!” [5:17]

If we are living in Christ, fellow believers, then we are not defined by the old self that we were anymore. Your past self does not have to define what your future self can be in Christ. The old bruising and rot of those peaches was not even remotely evident in the outcome of the pies and cobbler they became.

Now, the tender treatment that they received from my mom and me didn’t change the fact that they were once in such a condition. We could not instantly renew them to the former pristine peach they were, but we could use them anyway. Maybe even more so since sometimes it’s the bruising and ugly that brings out the sweet flavor in the flesh.

Similarly, God’s grace will not instantly perfect your past self. It could, but He doesn’t work like that. You don’t begin in God’s grace and sanctification and instantly get a brand new identity on this earth and a wiped record of everything you’ve ever done. Those moments in your past still exist. Those bruises on your flesh are still present. But the Lord, in His infinite wisdom, first forgives- thus no longer holding those sins against you in His eyes, and then begins to work in your life in such a way as to use those bruises and messed up portions of your old self to His glory and greater plan. He carves into your life, pruning away the rot, and then transforming your life in a way that you never foresaw.

In a small way, my mom and I showed a bit of grace to those ugly boxes of peaches and used them despite their flaws. In a much greater, much more remarkable sense, the Lord can use every mark, flaw, bruise, hurt, pretense, hard spot, streak of bitterness, and moment of failure in your life to transform you into the child of His that He intends for you to be.

Wait patiently, my friend, the pruning process is often a painful one- to feel old pieces of you get cut away is never easy; but trust me, the sanctification of the Lord  will bring about a beautiful new creation in you.Take heart, His grace is even sweeter than, well, that of a peach. ;)

(And yep, being super corny to make a point is allowed from time to time)