Banana Bread Parable!

I looked and saw a bright cloud, and someone who seemed to be the Son of Man was sitting on the cloud. He wore a gold crown on his head and held a sharp sickle in his hand. An angel came out of the temple and shouted, "Start cutting with your sickle! Harvest season is here, and all crops on earth are ripe."


Revelation 14:14-15

I love bananas, but there is a fine line between “ripe” and “rotten” when it comes to bananas. A ripe banana is sweet and still a bit firm and leaves no bitter taste in your mouth after each bite. A rotten banana (some say they are just “over-ripe”) is soft, mushy and already beginning to turn brown in spots. I will not eat a “rotten” banana unless there is nothing else to eat and I am very hungry.

But here is an interesting twist. One thing I love even more than bananas is banana bread! Banana bread is best if it is made with soft, mushy and already beginning to turn brown in spots bananas. Being the intellectual that I am, I sometimes think about the fact that the piece of banana bread that I am enjoying is made with bananas I would never eat otherwise. Actually, I have never admitted that thought to any before, but the words that go through my mind are: “It is truly amazing how this wonderful banana bread can be made out of rotten bananas!”

When Revelation 14 talks about Jesus harvesting “all the crops on earth” it makes me think of rotten bananas! The fall of man, and woman in the Garden of Eden turned everyone who has or will ever live into a rotten banana. We are spotted with sin and rejected because of it!

But Jesus came to make banana bread out of rotten bananas! Jesus takes my spoiled self, adds the flour, sugar and other ingredients of His righteousness, creates in me a clean heart and makes me suitable for living eternally with Him in Heaven!

And that is the parable of the loaf of banana bread! It makes me hungry!