Wonky but wonderful

from Ian Toone, New Life Church Derby

HAVE you been shopping for groceries recently? If so, you may have noticed that food prices are still increasing.

A recent report shows that an average basket of shopping is now 35.5 per cent more expensive than this time last year, with some items up by as much as 80 per cent.

In response to this, some supermarkets are now selling fruit and vegetables labelled as imperfect, or misshapen or wonky.

These are perfectly edible but don’t conform to traditional standards of what fruit and vegetables are supposed to look like. They’re not uniform. They’re not a standardised, consistent shape.

In the past they would have been discarded, but now they’ve been re-branded and are cheaper than the standardised versions. 

In reality, these food items are more natural. They’re more like individual normal fruit and vegetables, the kind you might grow in your garden or allotment.

This reminds me that God has plans and made us all unique. We all have our own individual personalities.

God didn’t make us to conform to a standardised mould. But that’s what the world around us often tries to do to us. Whether that’s how we look, or sound, or what we say, or what our opinions are, or what we wear, or how we feel or behave. And we can be made to feel that we are odd if we are different from the norm.

We’re all wonky in some way, and that’s a good thing, because God didn’t want us all to look the same or talk the same or act the same. His creativity is expressed in our individuality.

Now, of course, some of our wonkiness may need “de-wonkifying”, but that doesn’t mean we lose our individual personalities or become like robots. We still retain that individual stamp of uniqueness upon us, because that is how God designed us. He delights in our difference and diversity.

 So, let’s not be anxious if we feel we are unconventional in some way, God has created us as unique individuals. Let’s celebrate and be thankful for that, and let’s honour God by using our distinctive characteristics to accomplish His plans and purposes for our lives.