A dear friend recently gave me a big box of assorted chocolates.
I opened them up and offered them to the children. My daughter pointed to a square covered in dark chocolate drizzled with a white swirl and said, "What's inside that one dad?" I said, "I don't know."
She then pointed to a rectangular, darker chocolate piece with sprinkles on top and asked, "What's inside that one?" I said, "I have no idea.”
She then pointed to the shiny, round, milk chocolate dome that stands up above the others and asked, "What's inside that one dad?" Of course, that one I knew, that one is always the chocolate covered cherry.
I often wish my life was like that, that people could see the outside and instantly know what's on the inside.
If that were the case with us all then we would clearly see in one another the kindness, love, and good intentions that most people have and move through the world with. Too many times, of course, we come across much differently.
Getting our outside to match our inside is one of the most important goals of the Christian journey. How do we become more authentically ourselves? How do we let the love, generosity, kindness, and hospitality of God that is in each one of our hearts, become the most obvious thing about us?
We get some insight in Sunday's gospel. We will hear Jesus use that famous analogy about God being the vine and us being the branches - and that our thriving has everything to do with how well connected we are with the vine.
Jesus will use a distinctive Bible word, abide, to communicate the secret to authentic living: the more we abide, marinate in, surround ourselves with, make a bigger part of our lives, the words and teachings of Jesus, the more we will thrive and grow and change. We will bear fruit. And that fruit is love, kindness, forgiveness, encouragement, self-control, this kind of thing.
Yes, when these kinds of things become our most obvious traits then our outside matches our inside - and people can see us for who we really are.
Forget martyrdom, even sainthood, perhaps we’d all be better off trying to be chocolate covered cherries.
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