Blemishes

Blemishes have been on my mind today, and not because I have a teenager in the house.    My dad came through town and brought us a lovely big box of oranges and grapefruit.  Tom and I will abstain for now, though I’m secretly hoping that the girls don’t finish them all before the end of our food fasting month.  Sydney cut orange wedges for a snack last night and she said, “Oh my gosh, these are the juiciest oranges ever!”  My mom warned me that I would be bummed that we didn’t have oranges on our list because they were the best oranges she had ever eaten in her life.

What really caught my attention, though, wasn’t the beautiful, orange juiciness on the inside.  It was the outside of the oranges.  They weren’t all that pretty.  I would have passed them over at the store.  They were blemished and imperfect -- spotty and slightly pitted in some places, smooth and shiny in others.  It reminded of what I heard on a special broadcast on Food Network a few weeks ago called, “The Big Waste.”  

Statistics from the broadcast were shocking:

• 40% of the food produced in the US is never eaten
• For every American, 200 pounds of food are wasted each year

That’s 1,000 pounds of perfectly edible food for our family alone that goes to waste.  I haven’t translated these numbers into wasted labor, energy, transportation and the like.  Nor have I done the math on how many could have been fed in other parts of the world were resources distributed more equitably.  I’m sure they are huge, ugly numbers.

Beyond these sobering stats, what stuck with me from the broadcast were several grocery operators’ comments that American consumers won’t buy blemished fruits and veggies, so the grocers are forced to discard huge amounts of otherwise perfectly edible food.  Said another way, American consumers want exteriors that speak of perfection, regardless of internal condition.  The growers, it stands to reason, are forced into over-production in an effort to fill the demand for perfection because the market bears the waste.

At our old house, we had a good sized garden and for several years running had a huge supply of incredibly delicious produce.  I’m telling you, when you have a hand in growing, nurturing and bringing those fruits and vegetables to peak ripeness, you are more than willing to delight in the pure goodness of the bounty and overlook the sometimes ugly exteriors.  

Which gets me thinking:  If exterior, surface perfection were God’s standard for who among us is “worthy,” we’d all be in deep dooey.   And keep in mind, God isn’t just our gardener tending us along to fruition.  He is our almighty creator.  As creator, how much more delight can you imagine He takes in savoring the fruit of our lives, blemishes and all, when we spend ourselves in worship of Him and love of others?  He is willing to forgive us our blemished lives.  Can I, American perfectionist that I am, not forgive a blemished apple?