gourds

I really like the Fall. One of the reasons that I like Fall is the visual stuff that goes with it, the holiday stuff, the pilgrim stuff, the pumpkin stuff. My wife really goes all out decorating our house with all sorts of orange, red, brown, and yellow stuff. That always includes gourds. For the longest time I never really understood the point of a gourd. I mean, after all, it's not really a pumpkin right? You can't really enjoy its' taste like some kind of squash can you? True, it is very Fall like and festive if used in the right combination of other Fall type decorations. But what is the point? You can't carve it, shouldn't eat it, can't really smash it in the roadway. So what is the point. I',m not really sure I have a point, other than to look good on my table and around the house. They bring color. I did notice one peculiar quality they have though. They can rot from the inside and you'd never know it until one day, with just a little agitation, they disintegrate into a slimy, gooey mass. I had one on the table the other day. It looked totally fine. It was still a vibrant orange. The last time I was playing with it only a few days before it still had that firm, rock like feel to it. In fact others around it were totally fine. I was rolling them back and forth slowly on the table toward some candles. It's my version of pilgrim bowling. Anyway, I rolled one, then rolled another, and then I gently rolled the third one into the pile and look out. Just a sight roll and it just went flat. They should come with a warning. Maybe something that says, "caution, even though the exterior looks fine, contents could be toxic when agitated." I thought alot about that this week. I looked in the mirror somewhere along the way and thought "gourd!". That's what I am right now. I'm touchy, not necessarily rotten, but not very appealing either on the inside. It doesn't take all that much to make a mess.
I don't look so bad on the outside, but the inside gets revealed pretty easily when agitated or rolled. I haven't taken good care of the inside lately. The thing I've learned with gourds is that, if you let the outside get inside, rot happens. When air gets to the middle, the middle begins to breakdown. I think that I've allowed too much of the outside to get inside lately. The only way for me to counteract that is to fill the inside with that which is healthy and positive. I need more Jesus to counteract the world. I need more of God's word to provide a resource to draw upon. I need to fill my thoughts with what is pure, and lovely, and admirable and all of those other good qualities so readily available to me. My insides cannot exist in a vacuum. They are going to be filled with something. I need to pay more attention to what is filling them. I'm not sure how I got to this point this morning. Do any of you other gourds out there have any thoughts?