Fruitcakes!
I like fruitcake … quite a bit actually. But I seldom buy any at the peak of its popularity – those days leading up to Christmas. I buy my fruitcake mid-January. In fact, I bought some just yesterday. One year I snatched up a half dozen selling at Wal-Mart for $1 each. A half-dozen fruitcake bought mid-January can leave you enough change to have breakfast at McDonald’s and still not surpass the price of a single fruitcake sold mid-December!
Of course many people hate fruitcake. Search “fruitcake jokes” online and you find things like the sketch of the loaf on a psychiatrist’s bench confessing “I feel like nobody likes me!” A thought bubble shows the psychiatrist thinking “He’s a fruitcake case!” Or the archaeologists discovering the world’s oldest fruitcake and exclaiming “Its still edible!”
But no matter; though some people think I’m a fruitcake for liking fruitcake I still like fruitcake. Frosted or not, this year’s or last, sliced or brick, it makes no matter. I’ll root for this underdog.
Some of my best friends are fruitcakes too. No, no, not like that! I mean some of them are society’s outcasts. People pawned off to others, “regifted” to “agencies” not for their perceived value but because the “gifter” doesn’t want them cluttering up their pantry, or taking up space in their fridge.
But “fruitcakes” are not “hot potatoes.” If we could look at this world as Jesus sees it we’d find we are all “fruitcakes” too! We might try to hide under a glaze or thick frosting but Jesus sees what lies below.
Isaiah caught a glimpse of it: “…all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;” he wrote, “we all shrivel up like a leaf, and like the wind our sins sweep us away.” (Isa. 64:6).
We all “fall short of the glory of God,” penned Paul (Rom. 3:23). But God did not toss us aside, He did not “regift” us to the devil, or wash us away. Rather, “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Rom. 5:8). He paid a price that far out-stripped our worth! So much does He love each one of us. He does not snatch us up at bargain prices, He sells the farm for us, gives His life for us! He intends to make of us something beautiful for all eternity. How thankful we are!
Jesus loves fruitcakes too!
Press on…
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thebrokenrunner 
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