Saturday, December 17, 2016

Fruit Salad Pie? (the proper use of what you have)

The problem sometimes when you have several people buying groceries is that you get too much of one thing. Then you have to figure out what to do with them. For many this is where the freezer has come in handy, but some things just don't freeze well, like fruit.

I guess there is a way to prepare it for freezing, but I don’t know it and most of you I bet don’t either. Recently, due more to bad planning and the generosity of friends we ended up with a lot of fruit. Some of it, we are going to cut up and make a large fruit salad, the excess of apple I had another plan; a cobbler. If you don’t know what a cobbler is, at least my version, it’s like a pie but a lot bigger. This was going to fill a 9x13 baking pan. Once I was done, I had the cobbler and a deep dish apple pie. We had a lot of apples.

Once it was done the cobbler tasted great, there was only one problem: texture. Some of the apples were soft others were more crunchy. Mind you, it was good, and there was no way I was going to throw it out, but it wasn’t perfect. When I thought about it, I made what I could out of what I had and I was satisfied.

If I could throw together different apples why not throw all the different fruits into a pie? It would be making use of what we have, correct?

NO!

Fruit Salad Pie? I am not going to even begin to say how wrong that would be. A fruit bread, yes, but never a pie. Some things just won’t work together in making some things where they will in others. The conditions they have been prepared in changes everything.

This caused me to think about people. Sometimes especially in the church, we do what we can with whom we have. It sometimes you have the luxury of getting all the right people together. Sometimes, okay most of the time, it’s like my cobbler, it’s good but not perfect. Unfortunately, many churches are so set on cobbler that they put people and resources together that just doesn’t work. For a fruit salad, yes; cobbler or pie, no.
Does it mean that something is wrong? Yes and No.
No, there is nothing wrong with the people. They can be used of God and even with other individuals and resources.
Yes, it is wrong because some combinations don’t work. They may not be, bleach and ammonia (a deadly combination), but they end up creating something that is worthless.
Our problem in the church and even at work is we are determined to do something with people and resources that just won’t work. Afterward, we have wasted people’s time and our resources, and no one is helped. What is really scary is sometimes people congratulate themselves on producing the equivalent of mud pie then wonder why no one wants to eat it.
So what is the lesson here?

Be honest with yourself, be more concerned with the correct use of your people and resources rather than getting an individual product. For the church world, my arena, it means you might need to not have a youth program, a food pantry, a music program, or even a Sunday school class.  

If you’re more worried about getting a certain product no matter whom you have to do the work or what resources you have, then I hope you enjoy fruit salad pie.