The Zim Celebration on Tuesday night has really been an ordeal. Broken computers, room changes, etc. But more than that, it has required culling through moments and memories, photos and videos. It is a lot of life packed into three weeks that I am trying to boil down to a few minutes. All the effort is pointed to one thing: God’s glory.

It reminds me of the other day when I was teaching the girls to make a family favorite, peach butter. You take almost too ripe peaches and cut out the bad places, the bruises or mold spots. That is what I mean by too ripe. In fact, the best peaches for peach butter are the ones the grocer is going to throw out.

These culls are deceiving. They have bad spots, but if you cut into them a little there is still good flesh toward the middle. So you slice off the bad, and then split them open to remove the pit. If they are “cling-free” you pop the pit out. But if they are not, then you have to cut the peach off the pit. Did I mention that you don’t peel the peaches?  You don’t take their skins off, you just wash them.

So they have been washed, and trimmed, and pitted and NOW…they go into the blender to be ground up and then into the pot with sugar to be “cooked down” as Granny said. You heat the peach goop into a slow rolling boil and until it is a slow drip off the spoon. There is nothing better than this old farm recipe. It is southern glory at its finest.

Is anybody else seeing the human parallels here?  I want to be a beautiful flawless peach. But those kinds of peaches are hard and not so sweet. What I am instead is the kind that a lot of people would throw away.  But God.

God cuts out my bruises and moldy spots. But God doesn’t stop there. Then He splits me wide open and takes out the hard pits. Next  He puts me in a blender and grinds me up. If that isn’t bad enough He heats up my life and circumstances so that I feel like I am in a rolling boil.

But God. He doesn’t mind the extra effort I require. Doesn’t mind getting His hands dirty while He’s working on me. And He knows just how long to grind, how much sugar to add, how long to let me boil. And then the He gets to be the first one to taste and enjoy His new creation.

God is in the business of creating something wonderful out nothing. He gets all the glory that way. With this said, don’t miss us bragging on God Tuesday night. Truly He made glory out of nothing.