Bread For The Journey

It was cherry season and at our bible study group night we were served a bowl of fresh cherries.  

Rick, our friend and host, shared an interesting insight that he  had regarding cherries. 

He told how he used to examine them and set aside any cherry that was not 'perfect' and unblemished. 

Then one day he discovered that the ones that had a scar or blemish were sweeter than 
those that were without a flaw.  

He commented how he hoped that ,
though he himself was scared by sin and failure, 
 God would still find some sweetness in him as well. 

Curious, I did a google search when I got home and found that Rick was right.  Cherries with a scar are indeed sweeter.  One cause of the cherry blemish is that the  cherry rubs against a branch as it is forming and ripening.
What a beautiful spiritual analogy is portrayed here.
All of us can point to personal  scars or imperfections -  we are flawed by rubbing against the unavoidable but painful or difficult circumstances of life.
In response, it is easy to  put up walls, thicker skin, self-defence reflexes. What we concentrate on is the 'scar' and do not stop to think that it is the challenges of life that build character, that give us strength , that cause us to become the best that God intended we should be. The 'scars' are simply the evidence that indeed we have been tried and tested.  The question is ,... are we sweeter for it ?
Scripture tells us that we can only comfort with the comfort that we ourselves have experience in our time of need or suffering.  It is our own difficulties that teach us the wisdom we need to minister to others in sweetness of love and compassion.

".... God of all comfort, 

who comforts us in all our tribulation, 

that we may be able to comfort those  

who are in any trouble 

with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted 

by God."

 II Cor. 1:3b,4