Never Crushed
One of my favorite things to do as a young child was help my grandma make apple cider. We would go out into her orchard and fill a wooden basket with apples. After we washed the apples in a sink in the basement, we would head upstairs to the kitchen where a wooden apple press awaited us. Grandma let me help her fill the round hopper with apples. I then watched with wide open eyes as she turned the crank, causing the pressing disk to slowly crush the apples, squeezing the juice into the tub below. Grandma always let me have a few turns of the crank, but it was hard work for a little boy. With a smile and a pat on my behind, she always told me I did a good job.
This went on for what seemed like hours, but time seemed to stand still as I helped Grandma make apple cider. Once all apples had been squeezed, and after we cleaned up the cider press, the best part was yet to come – Grandma poured me a glass of cider as I sat on her lap. To this day, I do not know which I liked better, sitting on her lap, or tasting the cider.
The apples got put under tremendous pressure, pressed and squeezed, turning their once roundness and red color into a pile of pulpy residue, called pomace. But as a result of the pressure exerted upon the apples, delicious juice was extracted. From a little boy’s point of view, what was left in the hopper sure didn’t look like apples anymore. But this pomace, it did not go to waste. We fed it to the hogs. And in today’s commercial apple juice processing, pomace is the major by-product, a good source of antioxidants and dietary fiber. And for your sweet tooth, apple pomace powder is used in the production of toffee.
How often do you feel like one of those apples? You know, those moments when life is pressing in on you and you wonder if the pressure is more than you can endure. You cry out to God, begging, pleading, maybe even deal-making. You sense hopelessness and despair.
In the fourth chapter of Second Corinthians, the apostle Paul bares his soul regarding his struggles, his pain of being pressed and squeezed, But, in the midst of despair, Paul finds strength in Jesus. In vv. 8-9 we read these hopeful words – “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.”
Those words are hopeful because in your pain Jesus reveals Himself to you. Those words are hopeful because through your pain Jesus is refining you. Those words are hopeful because out of your pain Jesus can bring sweetness.
Those words are hopeful, because in, through, and out of, our pain, we are being made more like Jesus – “Consider it a sheer gift, friends, when tests and challenges come at you from all sides. You know that under pressure, your faith-life is forced into the open and shows its true colors. So don’t try to get out of anything prematurely. Let it do its work so you become mature and well-developed, not deficient in any way” (James 1:2-4, MSG).
So, no matter how pressed in, pressed on, pressed under you feel, know that God is using your circumstances to make something beautiful, something majestic, something delicious, in you, like the sweet taste of my grandma’s freshly squeezed apple cider.
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