4/21/12
I sat at the kitchen table this afternoon with our translator peeling potatoes for dinner. Well I was doing it by myself until she walked in, asked what in the world I was doing and then said, “No! You’re doing it all wrong. Here let me show you how.” I was very glad for her assistance. Not because of the help she provided in peeling potatoes but because I enjoyed being able to have a good conversation with her.
As we were peeling away I heard her say, “Uh-oh!” I looked up and saw that one of the potatoes had a really bad spot in the center. We decided she could just cut it off at the end and it would be fine. The only problem was the whole center of the potato was bad. There was no salvaging it. She said it looked good from the outside but the whole inside was bad.
I just chuckled and said it’s funny how much a potato can really relate to our own lives.
There are many days I can look at my life and say that if people saw me they would say I “looked good” but if they saw the inside they wouldn’t believe how bad things looked. I’ve gotten pretty good at putting up this wall and pretending like life is always wonderful and then on the inside letting things look a mess. But the mess always stays on the inside.
What an unhealthy way to live.
God has placed people in my life who desire to know what the inside, not outside, looks like. So why not expose myself? Because it’s messy of course!
But that's the point right there.
Because unlike the potato that wound up being no good at all and had to be thrown out, God wants to take my life and clean me up from the inside out. He doesn’t want to just throw me out and say I can’t be salvaged. He wants to take me and work through the mess on the inside with me. Which in turn will result in letting those people who want to know the inside be able to do so.
“The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”- 1 Samuel 16:7
Thanks God for potatoes!
This song says it all way better than I can.
