This was a sentence that was mispoken by the pastor this morning as he snitched a grape from a visual object lesson. I'm sure he meant to say, "These grapes have seeds in them."

That very little slip of the tongue has such very big possibilities!

There are a few different ways of looking at it.

You could say, "Those pesky seeds just get in the way of everything." Or (as Pastor Dave said), "I hope I don't choke on all those seeds." (He was talking about real seeds, though) This is a way of taking the fruit that God gives you in life and hoping you don't choke on the little bits of trouble that come along with life.

Next, you could say, "Ok, there's a few seeds, but look at all the nice fruit around them." This is a good attitude - looking around the touble in life in order to focus on the good that God has sent.

But there's a third way.

What happens if a fruit doesn't have seeds? (At least in the days before "seedless" fruit), the species would die out in a fairly short time. It's the seeds that continue life.

It's the same with trouble in life. A life without trouble may be pleasant, but it doesn't bring much growth.

We can look at troubles in this life in these three ways.
We can complain that the troubles interfere with life
We can look around the troubles and see only the good in life

Or we can embrace the troubles (this does not mean look for trouble). We can accept and embrace "growth opportunities" that God gives us in the middle of the trouble. We can let ourselves grow and prosper spiritually.

We will have troubles in life. It is how we react to them that will tell the world the kind of "Christ-follower" we are.