Beaded Fruit

A

rts and craft projects never really interested me as a kid.  They required patience and the ability to work long hours poring over tedious details.  After five minutes or so, it was impossible for me to keep my focus and I’d start fidgeting and looking for any excuse to stop what I was doing and being another activity.  The sole exception to this was Bible school during the summer.  I enjoyed the arts and crafts there because we concentrated on one or two projects and had several days to complete them.  They didn’t try my patience nor frustrate me.

My grandmother, however, was just the opposite.  She always had some sort of project going.  She wrote children’s plays for our church and spent untold hours making costumes and props.  She also enjoyed making the decorations and writing the narration for the annual Christmas tree decoration at church.  She always gave one hundred per cent to all these activities and the finished products bore witness to that fact.

However, there was one project she did that I will always remember. Grandmother took pieces of plastic fruit and transformed them into beautiful arrangements that she placed in her kitchen and in her living room.  The project was very simple and the results were fantastic.  She would take a piece of fruit and, using straight pins, would attach colored beads to it.  When she finished, the fruit had a very different look.  It was much prettier and more attractive than it had been lying on the store shelf. 

She made arrangements for her kitchen, her dining room, and her living room.  Several people saw the fruit and started the project for themselves.  My mom did some for our house, making arrangements for our kitchen and den.  The project was so simple, that I enjoyed helping.  There was nothing to make, cut out, or glue together.  Instead, we started with a piece of plastic fruit and changed its appearance into something more pleasing and attractive than when we first began.

           

Would it surprise you to learn that this is the same process Jesus used when he called the disciples?  They were rough, rugged men, set in their ways and accustomed to a certain way of life.  They had careers, they had families, they had their habits, and they had some different ideas concerning living.  They were diamonds in the rough, just waiting for someone to see their potential, to spend time teaching them, molding them, and changing them into something more attractive and beautiful than they were. 

That someone was Jesus!  He chose these men, not based on what they were, but based on what they could and would become after he finished working with them.  Mark 1:16-17 gives us an important glimpse at these men as Jesus calls them from their every-day lives and invites them to begin serving with him.  And passing along by the Sea of Galilee, he saw Simon and Andrew the brother of Simon casting a net in the sea; for they were fishermen.  And Jesus said to them, "Follow me and I will make you become fishers of men."

There are three interesting points we need to see in this brief passage of scripture.  1) Jesus was walking by the sea.  He didn’t go the financial center, he didn’t visit the universities, and he didn’t visit the religious center in the area.  Instead, he walked by the sea, looking for common men to accomplish an uncommon task. 2)  Simon and Andrew were casting their nets into the sea.  They were doing what they had done for years; they were practicing their livelihood, providing for their families.  Yet, Jesus knew he could take them and teach them to use their talents in ways they never dreamed possible.  3) Jesus called them to change the focus of their lives, to concentrate on catching men rather than fish.  He took them as they were and promised to make them into what they could become.

As I think about those pieces of plastic fruit that my grandmother transformed into beautiful arrangements, I can’t help but understand that God wants to apply that same process to our lives.  He takes us as we are despite our blemishes, faults, and weaknesses and he promises to make us become something else. He patiently and painstakingly works, until we have a new appearance and are ready to be placed into a new arrangement that he has designed for us. 

Instead of an ordinary piece of fruit lying on a shelf, God makes us over, giving us a new look and a new life.  The process is not always easy; but it is worth it.  Each test, each trial, each blessing, brings us one step closer to being what God wants us to be.  Remember, Jesus told Andrew and Simon that they would become fishers of men, not that they were fishers of men.  We can’t be what God intends for us to be without change.  Only he can change us and only he knows what we can become when he has finished working in our lives.  Won’t you let him work in your life today?