Eating the Fruit

While eating fresh pineapple on the beach, I was mulling over the problem of sin and grace. It seems that the people who have embraced sin the most are the most grateful for God's love and understand it at a level that others cannot. Jesus says those who are forgiven much have much gratitude. This seems backwards to me, but the Spirit was in a teaching mood today.

The fruit, what does this have to do with pineapple? I thought of Adam and Eve, and their first experience with sin. They ate the fruit with the promise of becoming "like God" knowing good and evil. So indeed, they came to understand more of life and both extremes of good and evil. Would they have been better off not understanding. Hmm... yes. Was their anything magical about the fruit? Probably not, but our temptation is the same every day. We can indulge in evil and gain more knowledge... become more like God, or we can choose life.

I've seen parallels like that in my own life, times when I have chosen the knowledge of good and evil over living with God. And I find that He responds to me much how He did to Adam and Eve. He covers me and mourns the broken relationship, but allows me another chance at relationship with Him, albeit with redefined interactions. I could go off on this for a lot longer; it's definitely worth thinking about.

Covertly I've just described most of my day to you. I lay around thinking, reading, praying and basking in the sunshine. The above is the coherent consolidation of all that. The excitement of my day came after a walk down the beach to chill with my French Canadian friends (the cutest one has a boyfriend... dang). I'm surrounded by wonderful people here.

On the way back, I saw a little kid with a soccer ball, so I stopped and motioned for him to kick it to me. When he finally got up the nerve, he rallied it over my head and into the beach chairs behind me. I couldn't stand for that. So I gave him the ball back and he started shooting on me (I played a little goalie in high school). Soon there were 8 or so kids taking turns shooting on the American. Eventually, a full-fledged soccer game erupted on the beach. My team won.

After a quick, awkoon, ree ree-ay nah diahl banh chobe neh (thank you, very nice to meet you) and a dip in the ocean, I returned to my friends on the beach. Tonight will probably involve some really cheap food and drinks, and maybe some dancing!!

I had some sweet conversation about Jesus today too, both with my med friends and the French Canadians. Love talkin' about that guy.