Lemons

 If the church were a car dealership, you’d have a lot full of lemons. It’s not necessarily the way we think of ourselves; we’d rather imagine we were a lot full of brand spanking new Jaguars, or, for some who have a penchant for the extravagant, Rolls Royces, but we’re not, and that’s all there is to it.

There is a difference between being perfect and being perfectible. If you walk into a church expecting everyone to be perfect, all you’ll be in for is a world of disappointment and not much else. That you’re judging everyone around you in the first place is something you should probably work on, but we have this tendency to expect others to be what we ourselves are not.

Before you expect perfection from everyone around you, look in the mirror and be honest when deciding whether or not you are perfect. God never promised a perfect church, but He did promise He would continually perfect it.

Before we continue, it must be said that there is a difference between holy and perfect; no, they are not interchangeable. If we need to break out the Webster’s dictionary again, we will, but to be holy is to be consecrated and set apart to God; being perfect is being perfect. If you have one flaw, any flaw, whether objective or subjective, then by definition, you are not perfect! Are you carrying a few extra pounds? Is your hairline past the halfway point of your head? Do you snort when you laugh? Do you pick your nose? Do you have ear wax? Is IBS a thing for you? Snaggletooth, acne, crooked nose, nose hair, unibrow, halitosis? Then you are not perfect.

You could very well be holy with any or all of these things, perhaps even more - I hear athlete’s foot is a problem for some – but you wouldn’t be perfect.

To be holy is to be consecrated to God. This means you have been declared sacred, you belong to God, and no other will have sway over your heart, your actions, your thoughts, or your desires. God will take you as you are, but He will make you into what He wants you to be. You cannot be consecrated to God and remain in the same condition as you were before your consecration.

A few years back, I was at an estate sale in Chicago looking at some art I thought might have some value given the right buyer. It turned out to be a lithograph rather than an original, and what they were asking for it told me they didn’t know they had what amounted to one copy of multiples on their hands.

Since I was already there, I started looking around the home, seeing if I could find something I could flip to make back my time and my gas money. There was nothing to be had downstairs, but as I went through the bedroom closet upstairs, I saw a pair of cowboy boots. They were dusty, mud-splattered, and looked as though they hadn’t seen sunlight in a year or five, but I could spot Hornback caiman crocodile from a mile away, and when I looked inside the shaft, Lucchese handmade was promptly stenciled on the side.

I took the boots to the lady running the sale, asked her how much she wanted for them, and after looking at them for the briefest of glances, she said, “is forty too much?” I said it wasn’t, pulled out two crisp twenties and handed them to her, then went to my car and drove home. 

It didn’t matter to me what size the boots were; it didn’t matter how rough they looked presently; I knew their value and knew what they would be worth once I was done working on them.

It took me all of fifteen minutes to clean the boots up and wipe them down with some leather conditioner. I sold them two weeks later for $1000. The man I sold them to was over the moon because he thought he was getting a bargain, given that these boots are usually custom-made and cost $5000 a pair.

Before anyone goes off on a tangent and misses the point of the story, it’s not my job to research items at someone else’s estate sale for them. I gave the lady the $40 she asked for, and she was happy to get it for what she assumed were a pair of used boots. I saw value in something a dozen people passed up without giving a second glance, not because I’m smarter than anyone but because I take the time to look past the grime, or the dirt, or the dust, or the ugly frame, and see the potential value of it.

We were all lemons. We were all muddy and dusty and not worth a look at on our best day, but God saw what we could become, nay, what we would become once He was done with us. If we’re all shiny and clean today, it’s not through any effort of our own; it’s because He took the time to clean us up when everyone else would have walked on by not giving us a second look.

Be grateful to God for what He has done in your life. Be thankful for the grace He has extended you in that He took the time to mold and chisel, clean, and scrub until you became a vessel of honor in His hand.

Even though we had the Maker’s mark, we were not up to Maker standards. He received us and is perfecting us daily because we are consecrated for Him. You haven’t always been where you are, and neither have I. We would do well to remember this whenever we get the impulse to judge others for their rough edges or odd appearance. God may have been working on you a lot longer than He has on them.

We all start out as lemons. The finished product is something else entirely.

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea, Jr.