I enjoy eating bananas, usually eating one every day. I like my bananas ripe, very ripe, disgustingly ripe, so say many of the people watching me eat one. When others think a banana is ready to be mushed up to make banana bread I think it’s finally just right to eat right out of the peel.
Sometimes I can only find green bananas at the grocery store. One day I saw a very old person buying green bananas; which was exhibiting a great deal of faith on her part, it seemed to me! There are ways to speed up the ripening of bananas. One method is to expose them to ethylene gas. This sound dangerous and unhealthy, but it’s not. Ripening apples produce this dangerous sounding gas, so put an apple and the bananas in a paper bag together and the bananas will ripen faster. If you want to slow down the ripening of bananas put them in the refrigerator, though they’ll turn an unappetizing black color they’ll be good beneath the peeling.
I found three bananas at various stages of ripening and thought it would make a good pic, so here it is. What message can we take from the ripening bananas? This: that the results we want in a particular area of life take time to ripen. We know this to be true but, wow, how often we seem to forget it! God has His own timing for the events of our lives to unfold into the results He has in store for us. When we try to rush or delay God’s will we’re as disobedient as when we don’t want to follow God’s plan at all. Timing is everything!
Sometimes we try to convince someone of something. Our arguments may be sound but if the person’s not at the place where they’re open to what we’re saying we’re just wasting our breath, and may be ruining any chance of the person coming around to seeing the light in the future. We may want to get to a certain point in our life this year but maybe God has it planned for us to reach that point next year.
On the other hand, we can put off something to the point that we end up losing the opportunity. Time waits for no one.
God has his own time frame for the ripening of His plans. I often ask the Lord to show me what to do; what I also need to ask Him is to show me the right time to do it!
“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens…” (Ecclesiastes 3:1)
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