Banana-Bunch

***Look for the Google Translate button at the very top, bottom, or right-hand column of each page! Now, you can translate any page to your favorite language: 109 languages, including Spanish, Indonesian, and Chinese! It’s a really neat function, thanks to Google Translate! 😁 Let me know if it works well in your language!

If you would like to hear the audio version of this post, please click below:

My hubs and I like bananas because they are a very convenient snack.  Granted, he likes them much more than I do because I think fruit should be juicy.  I barely even consider bananas a fruit because they seem rather dry to me.  I like to eat a banana only in very specific circumstances—when it’s been chilled and at the perfect ripeness: not raw and bitter and cotton-mouthy and not too ripe, where it’s sickeningly sweet and mushy, but juuuust right, like Goldilocks would have it.

Still, I have to agree that bananas are a very handy food to have around.  They come in this perfect built-in outer peel, like it’s own little virus- and germ-free packaging.  In these COVID times, this is more important than ever!  You can peel, hold a banana, and eat it without ever even touching the inside!  What genius of God!  This feature is especially awesome when you’ve been out and touching things in public and don’t have access to soap and water to disinfect your hands. 

There is, however, something very interesting about bananas.  From their stems, they give off a chemical called ethylene gas.  Apparently, even fruits produce gas!  I thought only people get gassy, but I was wrong.  Oh wait: I think I’ve heard of gassy dogs, too. 

But aaaanyway, a lot of fruits give off ethylene gas as they ripen, but bananas give off more gas than the average fruit—kinda like some people I know.  This gas helps expedite ripening, reducing acids and converting starches to sugars.

Because of this phenomenon, Hubs & I have a hard time finishing all the bananas we get from those big bunches at Costco before they get too soft and syrupy.  You know what I’m talking about?  You get them on Tuesday, and by Friday, they’re spotted.  By Sunday, the skin is brown and the bruises are showing, and they’re only good for making banana bread if that.

I’ve tried putting bananas in the fridge to preserve them, and it had the opposite effect!  They just turned completely brown and limp even faster! Aand that’s probably because being in a small, enclosed space only made the bananas even more strongly affected by their own gaseous releases! 

After we realized that the ripening gas is released from the banana stems, Hubs and I took to separating the bananas from the bunch and scattering them about the house—as faaar away from each other as possible.  Our strategy is to divide them so they don’t encourage each other to ripen so quickly and conquer them by eating them slowly and separately, one by one—at our pace, not theirs!  As nutritious as bananas are supposed to be, I can only bring myself to eat one of these “superfoods” a day at most!

So, in any season, if you come visit our home, you might find a surprise banana peeking at you from behind a lamp or on a shelf.  It’s like an egg hunt all year ’round but with bananas. 

Most of the time, this is fun, but once in a while, we forget about a banana, and find it brown and rotting in a corner all by itself—having missed its prime.  Yuck!

Interesting, isn’t it, this banana phenomenon?  It’s kind of like people and synergy or peer influence.

When we stray from the bunch, we develop and mature more slowly, and we might even get forgotten and not achieve our destiny. 

But when we stick with the bunch, participate actively as part of a community, a church family, we can encourage each other to grow and transform into the best God meant for each of us to be.  We can work together, polish each other, spur one another on toward love and good deeds when we don’t give up meeting together (Hebrews 10: 24-25).

Being in community with others who know and seek God’s love helps to work out the kinks in us (like the sour acids in fruit that decrease as they ripen).  It also sweetens us, makes us ripe for the picking.

Let us not allow the enemy to separate us and isolate us through COVID or other fears and keep us from growing and becoming the nurturing fruit we are meant to be.  There’s a hungry world out there who need our influence, our nurture, who need us to walk in the destiny God has given us—a destiny that brings all things together for the good of those who love Him.

So let’s stick together and share our gases—oooh wait, maybe let’s not use that metaphor.  God’s words are much more eloquent than mine!…:

He says in Proverbs 27:17 that we should stick together and allow iron to sharpen iron.  When two people put their ideas together, they help each other to become sharper, to discover and learn things that might have taken much longer alone.  Imagine THAT!  We can learn from each others’ experiences instead of trying to make all the mistakes ourselves. 

What’s more, in times like these, when we’re especially susceptible to anxiety, fear, and depression due to the many calamities and stresses around us, sticking together may be a matter of survival.  “Though one may be overpowered, two can defend themselves.  A cord of three strands is not quickly broken” it says in Ecclesiastes 4:12.

Now, what if—you say—I’m not a banana?  Well, me, too!  I, personally, would much rather identify myself as a watermelon or peach or passion fruit!

Well, that’s okay.  We’re all different, and we’re actually supposed to be.  Being different is actually good ; that’s why we can learn from each other, so no matter whether you’re comparing apples to oranges, we need each other to ripen.  Fruits ripen faster when they are together.  We help each other grow and mature.

So, let’s get  back in the bunch, the fruit bowl, and get ourselves connected, reach out and join a small group, get involved, help hold each other up, interact with people who love and know God, text, video meet, call, find a family of Christ to be involved in, support each other in these trying times, and encourage one other to sweeten, grow, and mature to all we were meant to be!  

And let us consider how we may spur one another on toward love and good deeds.  Let us not give up meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another—and all the more as you see the Day approaching.  ~Hebrews 10: 24-25