The Orange
I was eating an orange
when I asked a question
that perhaps an orange
was never meant to answer.
Did God make the orange
to simply be an orange?
To be peeled,
separated into little pieces,
and eaten over the kitchen sink?
Or did He make it
knowing one day
we would squeeze it
until a glass was filled,
or grate its skin
into a cake,
or steep its peel
into something warm?
Did He make it for the juice?
For the zest?
For the sweetness?
Or did He simply make an orange
because He is God
and God makes things?
The answer I was given was this:
Perhaps God made the orange
and then made us
with enough wonder
to ask what else
could be done with it.
And I think there is something
holy in that.
Because maybe creation
is not merely a collection
of things with one assigned use.
Maybe it is an invitation
to discover.
The orange was already whole
before I ever cut it.
Its sweetness was there
before I ever tasted it.
Its fragrance was there
before I ever peeled it.
I did not give the orange
its goodness.
I only discovered
what had already been given.
And perhaps that is true
of so much of life.
We spend our days asking
what we are supposed to do
with what God has placed
in our hands.
As though purpose
were something we must invent.
But the God who made the orange
also made the one
holding it.
He made the fruit
and the hands that peel it.
The world
and the minds that cultivate it.
The raw material
and the imagination
He has given us
to make something from it.
And perhaps creativity
is not our attempt
to make something
out of nothing.
Perhaps it is gratitude—
taking what God has made
and, with what He has entrusted to us,
discovering another way
to reflect His goodness.
The orange does not need
to become juice
to have been worth making.
And perhaps neither do I.
Maybe I was not created
to prove my usefulness.
Maybe I was created
first to belong
to the One
who made me.
And everything else—
the making,
the cultivating,
the working,
the creating,
the discovering—
is simply what happens
when creatures
begin to wonder
what the Creator
has placed
inside His world.
My worth is found in Christ.
It was never waiting
for me in a job title,
a home,
a marriage,
the church I hope to pour into
and be poured into—
these are good things
to hope for.
But they are not
what gives me purpose.
They are not
what gives me worth.
Christ does.
And so perhaps
I do not need to know
exactly what comes next.
Perhaps I only need
to look at what God
has already placed
in my hands.
What gifts has He given me?
What abilities has He entrusted to me?
What work is in front of me
right now?
And how can I use it
faithfully for Him?
The orange was never
asked to decide
what it would become.
It simply received
what its Creator made it to be.
And perhaps faithfulness
looks a little like that:
not knowing
what the next season holds,
but trusting the hands
that made me—
and worshiping Him
with whatever
He has placed
in mine.
“All I have needed Thy hand hath provided;
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me.”
