We stopped at a roadside veggie stand yesterday and picked up a watermelon, a bag of boiled peanuts, a tomato and two pounds of purple hull peas. The peanuts and tomato have already left their earthly existence and will shortly be reborn in another form. With only half of a watermelon remaining, I’m confident that the other half will soon assist the tomato and peanuts in their rebirth process.

But, all of that is simply fluff. The real issue at hand is the two pounds of purple hull peas.

I heart purple hull peas. Especially with a little rice.

I don’t like the process of liberating the peas from their pods. I just spent the last hour and a half preaching a liberation theology to my purple hulled audience. And, they were reluctant to respond to my invitation. Only a handful were actually ready; they opened easily and the peas fell out. The majority were either too old or too young; they were the cause of my vexation.

That got me to thinking.

Earlier this morning I had camped out in Romans 6, particularly 6:12-23. For some reason I kept mulling it over and over, as though there was something I should be seeing but wasn’t. A little later, as I evangelized the purple hull peas, it dawned on me.

Substitute “immature/old purple hull peas” for the word “sin” in Paul’s diatribe. Then go shell some purple hull peas. In my strange way of reasoning it suddenly made sense: what should be easy has become difficult, frustrating and irritating. Why not throw out the immature/old purple hull peas and take advantage of the ones that are ready?

But now that you’ve found you don’t have to listen to sin tell you what to do, and have discovered the delight of listening to God telling you, what a surprise! A whole, healed, put-together life right now, with more and more of life on the way! Work hard for sin your whole life and your pension is death. But God’s gift is real life, eternal life, delivered by Jesus, our Master.

Odd, isn’t it (not me! Paul’s reasoning)…