The mandarins on our trees are just about finished, and I was peeling one of the last the other morning. It was firm and round with a beautiful sheen to it, and looked to be a perfect specimen. But as the skin was being peeled back. I could see a small black patch deep inside the fruit. This was going to spoil the whole thing, as each segment had a tinge of the black on it. The mandarin was unfit to eat, and I had to throw it out.
How often we are like this mandarin! We put on good clothes to go to church and sit there listening to the sermon, but inside we may be day dreaming miles away, or perhaps we have some resentment against someone else and are secretly seething about it. Afterwards, our friends greet us by saying, “How are you?” and we reply by saying with bright smile, “Fine, thanks!”
Everything appears to be great, but we know deep down that it isn’t. We aren’t fine at all. We are like that mandarin, and that patch of resentment inside taints every part of our life. We dodge that person when we see them in the street; we can’t say anything nice about them and perhaps start a whispering campaign about them.
For that mandarin to become edible, a lot of it had to be cut away. It hurts us when the bad stuff gets cut out, but until it does, we are useless to God and man. Jesus Christ could see right inside the hearts and minds of the priests of His day, and He told them they were hypocrites, saying one thing and doing another. Don’t let’s be like this; remember that He can see right inside us too.
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