"Kiwi, please."
Most of you have had the opportunity to eat at Upbeet in Atlanta. With all due respect to Chopt, Upbeet is an elite place for salads and in a league of their own (thank you Emily!) If Julie and I get anywhere near Atlanta, we find time to get by there to pay homage to “God’s garden.”
On a recent visit, we were excitedly going through the line - you know how it works. That process seems foolproof since we get to actually see all the options and add anything we want to our “build your own” bowl. The visual stimulation is just part of the fun and it’s guaranteed to produce the final product we are looking for. What could possibly go wrong?
To say that Julie gets excited in the Upbeet line would be an understatement. We all love her great passion for life and this is one of the places that it is on full display. This particular day she might have set a record for the most number of different items in a bowl. She hit her quota on toppings before we even got out of the fruit section. It was something to behold.
Well, sometimes our eyes deceive us. We see things that look great and highly desirable but turn out to be not what we thought. In this case it was the “kiwi.” Who doesn’t love kiwi? It seems like it is a fruit that doesn’t get enough play. I’m not sure why but maybe because it is grown exclusively in other countries like China, New Zealand, France, Greece and California :-).
The “kiwi” was positioned at the end of the fruit section. It was nicely chopped up and ready to be deployed by all takers. The unique shade of green catches your eye as you move through the line. With edamame on my mind, I had already moved on to the vegetables as Julie was pointing and asking for some “kiwi.” The server obliged and we happily continued with our salad artistry.
We usually dine in at Upbeet. With all of the anticipation and creativity that goes into salad sculpting, it seems almost cruel to have to get it “to go.” Eating in the car on the way home is not ideal, but it’s not a bad option since we were in a hurry. However, it took only a few minutes to notice that something seemed awry. The normal Julie Edwards excitement was missing. We were merging onto I-20 with a full head of steam when Julie confessed that the “kiwi” that she ordered was actually green peppers.
If you think about it, green peppers are exactly the same color as kiwi. When they are both cut up, they look almost identical. Upon review, the fact that they were located by the other fruit options in the transition area to the vegetables seems kind of unfair. It was a mistake that could have happened to anyone. I hated that we didn’t have time to go back and correct it for my sweet and unsuspecting wife. The good news is that we were able to laugh about it and find “life lessons” from it.
Sin is often like kiwi. It parades itself attractively and is often disguised as something that we think we really want/need. Sometimes the feedback comes right away that we have fallen for deception (green peppers) and other times it’s not until we suffer more severe consequences to learn our lesson.
Experience is the hardest kind of teacher, it gives us the test first and the lesson afterwards.
It was sad to see Julie’s disappointment when she realized that the salad could not be salvaged. The little pieces of green peppers had infiltrated the whole salad. The bowl was full of incredible goodness with so many of her favorite things but the pesky little peppers ruined the day.
Sin is like this as well. A single troublesome sin that we continuously struggle with can ruin the moment - or much, much more. Sin always involves deception because, in the moment of truth, we are willfully choosing something other than obedience. We are effectively saying that we know what is best for us more than God does.
We have awareness of some of our sin. At times, we are willing to “make friends with sin” when we are living in unrepentance. Pet sins like envy, lust, and pride can become fixtures in our lives and character. In some cases, we may have blind spots and not even be aware of our sin. It’s been said that “a person’s heart is never is such a hopeless state as when they are totally unaware of their flaws.”
Fortunately, while we are responsible and accountable for our character, we are not dependent upon it for salvation. God doesn’t love us because we are good, he loves us because He is good. Pastor/Author Jerry Bridges said it so well:
“Our worst days are never beyond the reach of God’s grace and our best days are never beyond the need for God’s grace.”
Beware the “kiwi,”
Big E
Matt. 5:6