“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me and he has anointed me…to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.” (Isaiah 61:1, 3)

I still recall how upset I was at the family when they did not consume the bananas I had bought for them and allowed them get too ripe to eat. The sight of those ugly bananas was driving me nuts. The thought of throwing away yet another spoiled bunch was driving me nutsier.

I was about to give them a lecture on why we should not let things go to waste with pointed references to the starving children of Africa who would die to have a ripe banana and clinch my case with a well-chosen ap-peel to the wisdom of Solomon from the book of Proverbs.

Enter Sulojana on the scene. She nipped my speech in the bud by showing me a recipe book.

She pointed out how some people would have to search all over town in every grocery store to find a supply of ugly ripe bananas…while we had them right here at our finger-tips.

After all, don’t you know, that’s the main ingredient in banana bread?

I must’ve missed the class on baking banana bread in Kindergarten, Elementary School, High School, University and Seminary somehow.

Now that I was enlightened on the necessity of overripe bananas, my blood pressure could return to normal…and I didn’t have to waste my precious breath on an unnecessary speech.

As a matter of fact, I was now grateful to the family for persistently ignoring those under-ripe bananas for a whole week until they turned into the perfect ingredient for the next loaf of yummy banana bread.

Isn’t it amazing how we can take something that looks like it should be tossed out unceremoniously and make of it something that is worthy of being wolfed down with glee?

If you and I can do this in the kitchen, how much more can we trust God to take the yucky stuff in our lives and turn it into something yummy, eh?

My dear friend and co-founder of DWOD, Darren Canning often shares in his posts about how his life was such a mess at one time. A failed marriage, drugs, alcohol, relationships that did not honour God had brought him to the point of preparing to take his own life.

Yet, God met him at that very point and took a mess of ugly bananas, started adding other ingredients—a praying mother (see the DWOD for May 13, 2103) , a wise mentor, a supportive church family, a loving wife, to name a few—and eventually made him into the flavourful loaf of banana bread that he is today! Now you know why people always want a piece of him, ha, ha!

 (I encourage you to order and read Darren’s book “Fire Script” to get the whole story)

Suffice it to say he is not alone in experiencing this kind of amazing transformation. I am sensing in my spirit that many of you, our loyal DWOD subscribers, have such stories to share as well.

Would you send them to me by e-mail at jeeva@destinywordoftheday.com? With your permission, of course, we would like to share them with the rest of your DWOD family from time to time.

In the meantime, let’s praise God who turns yucky bananas into a yummy banana loaf!