The Biggest Blueberry!

 

I walked along the walk towards the front yard.  Behind me, I heard the sound of Aria barking, but I ignored her.  There, along the driveway I could see my blueberry bushes full to the bursting with blueberries which seemed odd, since it was a chilly February day.

I picked a handful and ate it, tasting the sweet tartness of the berries.  Then, I saw it -- a blueberry as big as an apple, shining in the morning sun.  I had never seen a blueberry that big.

I picked the blueberry and in an exact of selflessness, I ran tearing into the house.  "Elaine," I called to my wife.  "I found the biggest blueberry I have ever seen and I want you to have it!"

Elaine took the blueberry, looked at it for a second then bit into it.

My moment of glory was immediately swallowed up by the sound of her choking and spitting out the berry into the trash.  "That is awful!"  She said.

And that, dear readers, is when I woke up.  It was all a dream and not even a very good dream at that.

I am not certain how to interpret it.  Certainly, it doesn't seem to speak of years of famine and plenty, nor of future empires.  If it speaks of anything, it is probably my forlorn desire to have a few blueberries from our bushes in a year when spring came to early and all of the blooming things are bound to get frozen.

Maybe it also says something about things that are not what they seem.  There are plenty of people who look good on the outside, but aren't so good on the inside.

Jesus told the Pharisees of His day that they were like white washed graves -- freshly painted on the outside but inside, they were full of dead men's bones.  Not surprisingly, they didn't take this very well.  No one really wants to be compared to a sepulcher -- however nice looking that sepulcher might be.

Our goal must never be to only clean up the outside.  Cleaning up the outside is helpful before going on a date, but for life, it is far more important is to let Jesus purify our hearts.

This is the only way to escape the trap of hypocrisy, of trying to seem like something that we aren't really -- a little like an apple-sized, dream lemon masquerading as a beautiful blueberry.