When life gives you lemons…make jelly! At least that’s one thing Jen does with lemon juice. She probably would willingly trade lemons for a chicken if anyone is interested, but she and her mom and the girls have had a great time picking wild violets and learning how to soak them, add sugar, and then add lemon juice to cause the chemical reaction that gives the jelly that great color. It needs the sweet but wouldn’t work without the sour.
In our lives, God does pour in the sweet, but He’s also good enough to take the sour, difficult times and use them in big ways if we are willing to let Him. 2 Corinthians 8:1-2 tells about some people who were generous despite difficult, sour circumstances: “Moreover, brethren, we do you to wit of the grace of God bestowed on the churches of Macedonia; 2 How that in a great trial of affliction the abundance of their joy and their deep poverty abounded unto the riches of their liberality.” They gave in a big way even though they were facing “deep poverty.” They enjoyed the sweet benefit of their salvation through Jesus and fellowship with God and were willing to allow something good to come from their lives even when life “gave them lemons.”
Their giving shined out an amazing example for other churches and for all of us. No matter what life throws our way, we have a choice to stay sweet or become sour, to become bitter or to allow God to grow us and use us during difficulty. I don’t know if these people would have still given so generously if circumstances had been easier, but I do know that their example had more impact because they were willing to let God do something great even when things were not so great. It takes lemon juice to give violet jelly the right color, and sometimes it takes something sour for us to grow and to have the biggest impact on people around us.
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