Rotten Apples

Central Park, Antigua

Yesterday I was in the far back of the market where the clothing department is located, and as I was heading out walking through where all of the produce and other products are sold, I noticed some giant apples that looked really good. Normally I buy small apples from a guy at the front of the market where I know they are fresh, but these ones looked really good just like the ones we get at home when it's the fall time when we make applesauce. So without thinking to feel them and see if they really were of good quality, I told the guy I would like six of them. I gladly paid him fifteen quetzales (two dollars) and was on my way. When I got home that afternoon I was really looking forward to trying them. Well, when I took one bite I was quite disappointed! It was all soft and juiceless. Gross. So I tried another and it was even worse- all pithy and dry. In my disappointment that my "nice big apples" were in fact terrible and that I would have to go back to get the little apples which don't look quite as good but in fact taste the way apples should, I was reminded of a very well-known, but very important, truth: "you can't judge a book by it's cover!" As I experienced yesterday, this can be true with food and other things, but more importantly it's true of people. We cannot know the truth just by appearances. Furthermore, I was reminded not be in judgement of people even if I do know the situation, because who am I to think that I'm better than someone else? God is the only perfect and all-knowing One, and it is His job alone to be the Judge. I've found that I need to be especially careful when I'm temped to judge someone, because I've heard it said that the very thing we hate most in other people is what we are the most guilty of, and I've seen this true in my own life. So, I hope you are reminded and encouraged as I was to see others the way God sees them, and I hope you don't have to go through eating gross apples to remember this important truth! :)

"...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

"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye?"

-Luke 6:41

"You, therefore, have no excuse, you who pass judgment on someone else, for at whatever point you judge the other, you are condemning yourself, because you who pass judgment do the same things."

-Romans 2:1