Until fairly recently that is. Now you will never see me biting into one as one does an apple, but I will eat them in other forms – mostly in soups, pasta and other things like that. A few weeks ago, I cut up a tomato or two, along with some sweet peppers and onions, stir-fried them in a little olive oil and combined them with some black bean soup that I was making. Just this past week, I cut up the same, and made one of the best pastas that I have ever made (I also added sausage, spinach, peas and feta cheese). I find that by cooking with them, I am adding another dimension of not only health, but tastiness to my family’s diet.

With this in mind, I now try to buy tomatoes on a regular basis. So today, while I am at the grocery store, this is what I plan to buy and I usually pick up the roma tomatoes just because they are a little bit smaller. And they happened to be on sale for only $.99 a pound, which was even better. However, I usually look to see where they are coming from as this piece of information is really important to me. So, I asked the grocer who did not know but took the time to find out. Initially, he only found out that they were from the United States, but still this information was not sufficient enough. I said to myself that I should just buy them anyway and stop putting up a fuss. But he went to ask the produce manager and after five or so minutes or so, came back to inform me that the tomatoes were from Florida. This is what I was afraid of.

You see, Florida really does not have an environment conducive to growing tomatoes. As Barry Estabrook shares in his new book, Tomatoland, Florida’s sandy soil is devoid of any nutritional content. Because of these conditions, farmers and the like have to do a few sneaky things, such as pumping the soil with chemical fertilizers, herbicides and other pesticides, some which top the EPA’s most toxic list. Yet these are things that we end up putting up in our bodies, undoubtly with long term health effects. But the story from Estabrook’s perspective gets even worse:

Migrant workers are coated with these chemicals too. The toll that’s taken on them, in the form of birth defects, cancer and other ailments, is hideous to observe and should fill those who eat Florida tomatoes with shame.

I first learned of this issue several months ago while I was listening to Talk of the Nation. I was horrified to learn of the atrocities that these workers were forced to endure, mothers who had deformed babies born to them and others who ended up with cancer, all because of this evil, unregulated work.

I know that my refusal to buy tomatoes from Florida does not make a big dent in business. But hopefully, if enough people can stop buying tomatoes and even do a little protesting, we can get this thing changed.

So next time you go shopping for tomatoes, make sure to check the label!

This is the same question that I asked as I watched ‘the Help’ this past weekend. In all honesty I thought it was a good movie with a great plot, yet I left it having some nagging questions that I am not sure I will find the answer to. The main protagonist in the film, Skeeter Phelan, sets out to tell the perspective of the help, black maids who serve white families through services such as cleaning, cooking and child rearing. And as the movie shows it, these maids are treated awfully. And so I get Skeeter wanting to tell this perspective, but for what purpose? Is it just a good story that needs to be shared with others in order to sell books? Or is it a story that is supposed to propel others to take action on behalf of the stories characters?

I find that in many cases, our storytelling and reporting has no end other than that – storytelling and reporting. Perhaps in doing so, we are raising awareness of certain issues that plague different communities and societies, but we cannot stop there. Awareness in and of itself does not invite people to take action to change systems and situations that suppress the rights and livelihood of the people in those systems. It can only take people so far, perhaps invoking a sense of pity and maybe even a little charity. But pity and charity do not change the status quo; only compassion to the point of identification does and so much so that you are willing to become the person that you are advocating for. Jesus mastered this well!

Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. (Philippians 2.5-8, NASB)

Thank you Jesus, for not just taking pity on me and telling the story of my sinful estate. Thank you for putting on flesh and doing something about it!

Now, attaining this milestone brings with it a whole lot of stress, anxiety and fear for some people. Some start to think about their youth that has been seemingly lost. Others think about how much they will change in the coming years. And as I reflect on this day, I have to admit that there is some of that because the last ten years, since I turned 20, have been great! I mean, I have done so much, met so many wonderful people, started a beautiful family and been to some pretty amazing places. I would not trade the experiences and accomplishments over the last 10 years for anything in the world.

However, I have also done some pretty stupid stuff and made some asinine mistakes. Oh, how I wish I could forget some of these things! But the hope is that as I grow and mature that I will leave these notions and tendencies of being a youth behind. As the Apostle Paul says in I Corinthians 13 – ‘When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child, but when I grew up (bolded mine), I did away with childish things.’

You see, all change is not bad. In fact, change and growth are necessary components of life. If I do not want to be the same person I was when I was 21, naive, foolish, with my head stuck in the clouds, then I have to embrace change. This is not to say that change is not hard, oftentimes it is absolutely brutal. But as a result, in the end, I become and you become, the persons that God intended for us to be.

So bring it on 30! I’m ready!

“But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as from the Lord, the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3.18, NASB).