| Popcorn |
|
| |
Mmmm.....popcorn. Perhaps the greatest snack in the world. The smell! The taste! Even though the smell of microwaved popcorn is supposed to cause lung cancer, are we really going to banish the puffy snack from our lives?
We can learn a lot from popcorn. Really. Stay with me on this one - it may be a stretch, I'll grant you that!
There are four things needed for popcorn to pop. The kernal needs a hard shell. There needs to be moisture inside the kernal. The starch inside the kernal is vital. And there needs to be signifiant heat.
Low temperatures will not pop popcorn. It needs high temperatures. In that heat, confined in the hard shell, the moisture inside the kernal expands. The gelatinized starch granules in the kernal do not explode, but they expand into jelly-like bubbles that begin to fuse together into the puffy white stuff we love to eat.
In a way, we are like popcorn. We all have a hardened, sinful shell. How does God burst that hardened shell? Heat. Trials and tribulations.
1:2 My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations; 1:3 Knowing [this], that the trying of your faith worketh patience. 1:4 But let patience have [her] perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.
What do these trials do under the surface of our hardened shell? Well, it causes the moisture to expand. If the kerna lacks moisture, it will dry out and the heat will do nothing to it.
7:38 He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.
The Holy Spirit within us is that moisture - that living water. If we are spiritually dry, hardships will cause us to become bitter and angry. If we are filled with the Spirit, trials will cause the Holy Spirit within us to "expand."
The moisture in the kernal expands under the heat and brings about an explosion of the fruit - the puffed up starch.
5:22 But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, 5:23 Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law.
When the popcorn has popped, it expands well beyond its original size. It becomes more than it was before the heat. Trials and hardships in life can be used by God to make us more than we could have been otherwise - bigger, better, more wonderful. Better used for His glory. After all, we devour the popped popcorn, but we throw away the uncooked kernals. Without the heat, none of that would be possible.
And there is something interesting about popped popcorn. There is always a remnant left of the hard shell (that remnant gets stuck in your teeth). However, after the heat causes the explosion, the remnant of the hard shell gets buried in the puffed starch. After hardships and trials, that hardened shell of sin in us should be buried more and more by the evidence of the fruit of the Spirit.
When heat and hardships come into our lives, does the Spirit within us pop through our sinful shell and bring forth the fruit of the Spirit? Or do we dry up in bitterness and anger? |
|
Follow this blog
